Srebrenica Genocide Blog

EID MUBARAK - DON'T FORGET: REMEMBER AND WARN

2009-11-26T22:46:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: A Bosnian Muslim man says his prayers, at a cemetery in the Bosnian town of Tojsici, marking the first day of Eid al-Adha, Friday, Nov. 27, 2009.

Eid al-Adha holiday, as we know it, is celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Ibrahim to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God.

DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

Start sacrificing your time and energy to defend human rights. Don't be quiet any longer. Stand up against the Srebrenica genocide denial. Get active in publicly responding to the growing assault on truth and memory. "No" is not an option.

Not less than one million Bosnian Muslims had been displaced during the Bosnian war. Many of them had been ethnically cleansed and will never return to their homes. Many of our people had been tortured in the concentration camps, many had suffered in the besieged towns, many had been wounded, many had been killed. Furthermore, our suffering has constantly been relativized by the Hague Tribunal. For example, there was a lack of will to prosecute crimes of rape against our women and girls. In Milan and Sredoje Lukic case, the judges did not allow prosecution to include rape charges in the indictment due to technical reasons. To complicate things even more, we have a case of 25,000 documented rape victims, tens of thousands of wounded Bosniak civilians, and possibly thousands of other unfortunate victims who have not been included in the figure of approximately 100,000 war victims.

Every time you enjoy your life in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, London, Zurich and other western cities - I hope you remember that you came there as a result of the ethnic cleansing. Most importantly, I hope you remember that mortal remains of our victims are still rotting in mass graves and killing fields of Eastern Bosnia. How can you afford to forget this?

PHOTO: Bosnian Muslim children attend early morning prayers among several hundreds of Bosniaks gathered on Friday, Nov. 27, 2009, at Hazi-Husref Bey mosque in Sarajevo where the main religious service was held, honouring Eid Al Adha, one of biggest Muslim holidays.

Please light a candle in remembrance and honor of the Srebrenica genocide victims this holiday. Remember Srebrenica and, remember the suffering our people had to endure from 1992-1995 in the Srebrenica enclave, as well as in other cities under the siege. Don't forget. Instead, speak loudly, make yourself heard. Get active in defending the truth and memory of Srebrenica. Speak for those who can't speak for themselves. Remember and Warn.

PHOTO: A Bosnian Muslim man says his prayers near a tomb stone in front of the Atik Mosque in the Bosnian town of Tojsici, near eastern Bosnian town of Kalesija, 70 kms northeast of Sarajevo, marking the first day of Eid al-Adha, Friday, Nov. 27, 2009.

EID MUBARAK!

STATEHOOD DAY MARKED IN SREBRENICA

2009-11-25T21:29:00.000-08:00

Srebrenica Genocide Blog Wishes a Happy Statehood Day to all citizens of Srebrenica and Bosnia-Herzegovina!

PHOTO: Celebration of Bosnia-Herzegovina's Statehood Day in Srebrenica on 25 November 2009. Credits: Friends of Srebrenica.

On the occasion of 25th November, Statehood Day of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Srebrenica Cultural Center organized a ceremony attended by the representatives of the Municipality of Srebrenica who congratulated all citizens in Bosnia and Herzegovina, diaspora, and especially the citizens of Srebrenica the Statehood Day of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

25th November marks the day in 1943 that the statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina was re-established in Mrkonjic Grad at the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia.

"25 November marks as one of the most important dates in the history of our country. What the representatives of all people of Bosnia-Herzegovina had done at a session in Mrkonjic Grad was invaluable for the future and it had guaranteed the survival of Bosnia and Herzegovina."

In World War II, the city became renowned by the first meeting of ZAVNOBiH on November 25, 1943, when Bosnia and Herzegovina was proclaimed as a common republic of Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims/Bosniaks. "ZAVNOBIH" is short for "The State Anti-Fascist Council for the People's Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina." For the most of Bosnian war the city was in Bosnian Serb hands, but HVO (Croat Defence Council) units took it in 1995, while Serbian population fled. After the Dayton peace agreement the city was assigned to the entity of Republika Srpska.

According to the decision of the Srebrenica Municipal Assembly, all citizens of Srebrenica who mark the 25th November as their holidays are now entitled to paid leave from work.

"We hope that in future we will prove that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country which guarantees full equality to all of its citizens, and that tolerance and multiculturalism is the only correct way for all of us in Bosnia - the country in which the diversity has always represented a value - and never a threat, and we hope to continue celebrating this holiday in the future together," was the message of today's meeting held in Srebrenica on the occasion of Bosnia-Herzegovina's Statehood Day.

ALEXANDER DORIN - GENOCIDE DENIER

2009-11-21T19:16:00.000-08:00

SWISS LAW: Article 261 of the Swiss criminal code punishes genocide-denial. Currently, anybody is punishable in Switzerland if they "deny, belittle, or relativise genocide or crimes against humanity". We encourage Bosnian community in the Switzerland to file a legal complaint / lawsuit against Alexander Dorin for denying the Srebrenica genocide.

Alexander Dorin is unqualified pseudo-researcher and discredited Srebrenica genocide denier

The assault on the truth and memory of the Srebrenica Genocide continues by deniers comprised of various pseudo-researchers, conspiracy theorists, and anti-Western ideologists. One of them is unqualified and uneducated 'researcher' Alexander Dorin (photo on the left) - genocide denier who published a book of lies titled "Srebrenica — The History of Salon Racism" (Srebrenica — die Geschichte eines salonfahigen Rassismus). Alexander Dorin has no credibility; we're not talking about an academic source here, but a man who reduced himself to promotion Serbian propaganda, distorting the facts, and denying the Srebrenica genocide. In his book, Alexander Dorin constantly repeats long time rebutted genocide denial allegations mostly paraphrased from the writings of Milivoje Ivanisevic. Apart from deliberately denying that Srebrenica genocide ever happened, Alexander Dorin also uses other widely discredited arguments to support his preconceived conclussions and justify the massacre. For example:

MYTH: Alexander Dorin claims that forces under the command of Naser Oric killed more than 3,000 Serbs around Srebrenica. So, what are the facts?

FACTS: According to the Research and Documentation Center (RDC), "The allegations that Serb casualties in Bratunac, between April 1992 and December 1995 amount to over three thousand is an evident falsification of facts. The RDC research of the actual number of Serb victims in Bratunac has been the most extensive carried out in Bosnia and Herzegovina and proves that the overall number of victims is three to nine times smaller than indicated by Serbia and Montenegro."

In fact, the number of Serb casualties, most of them Chetniks [paramilitary thugs who participated in the killings and persecution of Bosniaks in/and around Srebrenica] amounts to 480. They are not victims of the so called "Muslim terror" or "Naser Oric's attacks", but casualties who died in the pursuit of a criminal enterprise, which consisted of the persecution, torture, rape, mass killings and ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian Muslim population of Podrinje [region around Srebrenica]. In 1992, three years before the genocide, Serb Army killed at least 11,391 Bosniaks in Podrinje region, around Srebrenica.

Human Rights Watch agrees with the RDC findings and explains that "The ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party launched an aggressive campaign to prove that Muslims had committed crimes against thousands of Serbs in the area. The campaign was intended to diminish the significance of the July 1995 crime, and many in Serbia were willing to accept that version of history. But as the Oric judgment makes clear, the facts do not support the equivalence thesis. Take the events in the village of Kravica, on the Serb Orthodox Christmas on January 7, 1993, for example. The alleged killing of scores of Serbs and destruction of their houses in the village is frequently cited in Serbia as the key example of the heinous crimes committed by the Muslim forces around Srebrenica. In fact, the Oric judgment confirms that there were Bosnian Serb military forces present in the village at the time of attack."

Asked to comment on the different number of Serb casualties in the Srebrenica region published in Belgrade, the Hague Tribunal's Office of the Prosecutor replied that these figures "do not reflect the reality."

MYTH: Alexandar Dorin scapegoats Bosniaks for not demilitarizing in Srebrenica - charging them for provoking the massacre.

FACTS: In fact, Serb Army did not demilitarize around Srebrenica. The Bosnian Government had entered into demilitarization agreements with the Bosnian Serbs. On 21 April 1993, the UNPROFOR issued press release saying that the process of demilitarization of Bosnian defenders of Srebrenica had been a success. According to the Agreement, the Serbs should withdraw their heavy weapons before the Bosniaks gave up their weapons. The Serbs refused to demilitarize. They never honored their part of agreement. Instead, Serb military and paramilitary troops continued using surrounding Serb villages as a base for attacks on (and brutal siege of) Srebrenica. Specific instructions from United Nations Headquarters in New York stated the Serbs should withdraw their heavy weapons before the Bosniaks gave up their weapons. The Serbs refused to honor their part of the demilitarization agreement and they never did withdraw their heavy weapons. In fact, following the adoption of Security Council resolution 836 (1993), the Bosnian Serbs continued to bombard the safe areas at about the same rate as before. In Sarajevo, for example, Serb shells continued to land in the safe area at an average rate of approximately 1,000 per day. To read more about Srebrenica demilitarization agreements, which were violated by the Serb Army, read our article "Understanding the 1993 Srebrenica Demilitarization Agreements."

MYTH: Alexander Dorin alleges that Srebrenica was used as a base to attack Serb villages.

FACTS: In 1992, three years before the genocide, Serb Army burned more than 400 Bosniak villages around Srebrenica and neighbouring municipalities. In a massive scale ethnic cleansing campaign, Serbs displaced approximatly 100,000 Bosniaks from their homes in Podrinje - Drina Valley region encompasing Srebrenica. Of those 100,000 people, Serbs killed at least 11,391 Bosniak civilians in 1992 (according to well documented data published by the Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Center).

Between 1992 and 1995, militarized Serb villages around Srebrenica had been used to attack and destroy nearby Bosniak villages, as well as to launch brutal attacks on Srebrenica. According to Naser Oric judgment, Serb village of Kravica had a large cache of weapons and was used to stage attacks on Srebrenica and nearby Bosniak villages. Furthermore, Serbs used their villages around Srebrenica to block humanitarian aid coming into the Bosniak enclave, which caused Bosniaks to start dying from starvation and engage in counter-attacks for the purpose of obtaining food and demilitarizing heavily armed Serbs around Srebrenica.

The Trial Judgment of Naser Oric makes it clear that Serb villages around Srebrenica were heavily militarized bases from which Serbs launched brutal attacks on Bosnian Muslim villages, as well as on the town of Srebrenica itself. As stated in the Judgment, quote:

"Between April 1992 and March 1993, Srebrenica town and the villages in the area held by Bosnian Muslims were constantly subjected to Serb military assaults, including artillery attacks, sniper fire, as well as occasional bombing from aircrafts. Each onslaught followed a similar pattern. Serb soldiers and paramilitaries surrounded a Bosnian Muslim village or hamlet, called upon the population to surrender their weapons, and then began with indiscriminate shelling and shooting. In most cases, they then entered the village or hamlet, expelled or killed the population, who offered no significant resistance, and destroyed their homes. During this period, Srebrenica was subjected to indiscriminate shelling from all directions on a daily basis. Potočari in particular was a daily target for Serb artillery and infantry because it was a sensitive point in the defence line around Srebrenica. Other Bosnian Muslim settlements were routinely attacked as well. All this resulted in a great number of refugees and casualties."

According to the Oric judgment, the Bosnian Muslim villages around Srebrenica were totally unprepared for war:

"In comparison, it appears that the Bosnian Muslim side did not adequately prepare for the looming armed conflict. There were not even firearms to be found in the Bosnian Muslim villages, apart from some privately owned pistols and hunting rifles; a few light weaponswere kept at the Srebrenica police station."

The Oric judgment makes it clear that Serb village of Kravica was a military base from which Serbs launched deadly attacks on neighbouring Bosnian Muslim villages and town of Srebrenica itself. The Bosniak counter-attack on Kravica on the 7 January 1993 followed as a result of Serb blockade of humanitarian aid and constant attacks on nearby Bosnian Muslim villages. According to the Judgment:

"The fighting intensified in December 1992 and the beginning of January 1993, when Bosnian Muslims were attacked by Bosnian Serbs primarily from the direction of Kravica and Ježestica. In the early morning of the 7 January 1993, Orthodox Christmas day, Bosnian Muslims attacked Kravica, Ježestica and Šiljkovići. Convincing evidence suggests that the village guards were backed by the VRS [Bosnian Serb Army], and following the fighting in the summer of 1992, they received military support, including weapons and training. A considerable amount of weapons and ammunition was kept in Kravica and Šiljkovići. Moreover, there is evidence that besides the village guards, there was Serb and Bosnian Serb military presence in the area. The Trial Chamber is not satisfied that it can be attributed solely to Bosnian Muslims. The evidence is unclear as to the number of houses destroyed by Bosnian Muslims as opposed to those destroyed by Bosnian Serbs. In light of this uncertainty, the Trial Chamber concludes that the destruction of property in Kravica between 7 and 8 December 1992 does not fulfil the elements of wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages not justified by military necessity."

The Judgment also confirms that Bosniak refugees in the besieged enclave started dying from starvation caused by the Serb blockade of humanitarian aid. As a result, Bosniaks had to counter-attack Serb military bases around Srebrenica to obtain much needed food and other necessities for the survival:

"Between June 1992 and March 1993, Bosnian Muslims raided a number of villages and hamlets inhabited by Bosnian Serbs, or from which Bosnian Muslims had formerly been expelled. One of the purposes of these actions was to acquire food, weapons, ammunition and military equipment. Bosnian Serb forces controlling the access roads were not allowing international humanitarian aid – most importantly, food and medicine – to reach Srebrenica. As a consequence, there was a constant and serious shortage of food causing starvation to peak in the winter of 1992/1993. Numerous people died or were in an extremely emaciated state due to malnutrition."

MYTH: One of Alexander Dorin's myths is a claim that more than 3,000 Srebrenica victims, from the list of missing, participated in the 1996 municipal Srebrenica elections. He also refers to the figure of "7,000 - 8,000" Srebrenica victims as a "western myth".

FACTS: In fact, none of the Srebrenica genocide victims ever voted in the 1996 elections. In the 1996 elections, which were held shortly after the 1995 genocide, local authorities simply used the list containing the names of all registered pre-war Srebrenica citizens. This does not mean that "dead people voted." According to Helge Brunborg, the Hague Tribunals' expert, at least 7,475 Bosniaks perished in the Srebrenica genocide. Under cross-examination in Blagojevic case, Brunborg (who speaks English as his Second Language) explained that by 1997, there were no missing people registered to vote:

"If you would look at Table 1 on page 7 in the 2000 report, you will see that there were 5 -- on the ICRC list and PHR list were 5.712. On the ICRC list only 1.586. That makes 7.298, which is 101 less than the ICRC number that you quoted, 7.399. In addition, we had access to information that the ICRC did not have at that time, I believe, which is the voters' list, 1997 and 1998, which were used to check that missing people were -- that there were no survivors who registered to vote. And we also checked difficult cases where the data were incomplete with the 1991 census.... The only thing is the information from ICRC, that 6 persons were found to be alive. So we subtracted that number." (Court Transcript)

Furthermore, Brunborg explained:

"People who are missing and believed to be dead should not be able to vote. So when we had this complete list of people who were registered to vote in 1997 and 1998, we wanted to make a comparison to see if there were, in fact, people believed to be missing who were registered to vote. So we did a very careful comparison, and we found nine names that we believe are unique and that are appearing on both lists of missing persons and the list of voters. So there is an error somewhere. Either these are not really missing persons, they are survivors, or somebody misused their identities because they knew they were dead, so they misused their identities, perhaps to get extra -- additional political influence, to vote twice. Or third, there is a mix-up due to data problems and so on. But the conclusion is that the number was very small. Nine, that is less than -- that is about one-tenth of a per cent. To be on the safe side, we subtracted these names, although it is not certain that these are survivors.... We asked the ICRC whether they knew about people who had survived, who they later learned to be survivors and not dead on the list of missing persons since January 1997. And they told us there were six persons out of 7.000, but they would not reveal their identities to us. So to be on the safe side, we subtracted another six persons from the total number. We could not delete those from the list that was also submitted to the court, because we didn't know their identities. In this way we ended up with 7,475." (Court Transcript)

Asked "how reliable do you think this number of 7.475 missing persons is it?", Helge Brunborg responded: "We think that the number is very reliable as a minimum estimate... the number could easily be higher because there were records that we excluded to be on the safe side."

As of July 2009, the DNA results of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) support an estimate of 8,100 Srebrenica genocide victims. So far, the identities of 6,186 genocide victims have been revealed by the DNA analysis. (Source: ICMP)

Conclussion: We can go on and on, but Alexander Dorin does not deserve more of our time. All of his dirty genocide denial allegations have already been discredited in the court of law and in front of the international judges. As you can see from some of the examples above, Alexander Dorin deliberately uses lies to distort the truth. He simply repeats outdated genocide denial allegations circulated by Milivoje Ivanisevic - who is uneducated/unqualified pseudo-researcher and highly discredited Serbian ultra-nationalist. Furthermore, Alexandar Dorin resides in the Switzerland. Article 261 of the Swiss criminal code punishes genocide-denial. Currently, anybody is punishable in Switzerland if they "deny, belittle, or relativise genocide or crimes against humanity". We encourage Bosnian community in Switzerland to file a legal complaint / lawsuit against Alexander Dorin for denying the Srebrenica genocide.

SREBRENICA DEAD DID NOT VOTE IN ELECTIONS

2009-11-21T17:28:00.000-08:00

Contrary to the allegations of genocide deniers, those killed in the Srebrenica massacre DID NOT vote in the 1996 municipal elections in Srebrenica

Some of the most despicable genocide denial claims have been tirelessly circulated by Milivoje Ivanisevic (and his followers). This discredited pseudo-researcher and Serbian ultra-nationalist has, for example, claimed that "3,016 persons from the list of missing" voted in the 1996 Srebrenica elections.

In fact, none of the Srebrenica genocide victims voted in the 1996 elections

In the 1996 elections, which were held shortly after the 1995 genocide, local authorities simply used the list containing the names of all registered pre-war Srebrenica citizens. This does not mean that "dead people voted." According to Helge Brunborg, the Hague Tribunals' expert, at least 7,475 Bosniaks perished in the Srebrenica genocide. Under cross-examination in Blagojevic case, Brunborg (who speaks English as his Second Language) explained that by 1997, there were no missing people registered to vote:

If you would look at Table 1 on page 7 in the 2000 report, you will see that there were 5 -- on the ICRC list and PHR list were 5.712. On the ICRC list only 1.586. That makes 7.298, which is 101 less than the ICRC number that you quoted, 7.399. In addition, we had access to information that the ICRC did not have at that time, I believe, which is the voters' list, 1997 and 1998, which were used to check that missing people were -- that there were no survivors who registered to vote. And we also checked difficult cases where the data were incomplete with the 1991 census.... The only thing is the information from ICRC, that 6 persons were found to be alive. So we subtracted that number. (Court Transcript)

Furthermore, Brunborg explained:

"People who are missing and believed to be dead should not be able to vote. So when we had this complete list of people who were registered to vote in 1997 and 1998, we wanted to make a comparison to see if there were, in fact, people believed to be missing who were registered to vote. So we did a very careful comparison, and we found nine names that we believe are unique and that are appearing on both lists of missing persons and the list of voters. So there is an error somewhere. Either these are not really missing persons, they are survivors, or somebody misused their identities because they knew they were dead, so they misused their identities, perhaps to get extra -- additional political influence, to vote twice. Or third, there is a mix-up due to data problems and so on. But the conclusion is that the number was very small. Nine, that is less than -- that is about one-tenth of a per cent. To be on the safe side, we subtracted these names, although it is not certain that these are survivors.... We asked the ICRC whether they knew about people who had survived, who they later learned to be survivors and not dead on the list of missing persons since January 1997. And they told us there were six persons out of 7.000, but they would not reveal their identities to us. So to be on the safe side, we subtracted another six persons from the total number. We could not delete those from the list that was also submitted to the court, because we didn't know their identities. In this way we ended up with 7,475." (Court Transcript)

Asked "how reliable do you think this number of 7.475 missing persons is it?", Helge Brunborg responded: "We think that the number is very reliable as a minimum estimate... the number could easily be higher because there were records that we excluded to be on the safe side."

Latest DNA results support the higher figure of Srebrenica victims

As of July 2009, the DNA results of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) support an estimate of 8,100 Srebrenica genocide victims. So far, the identities of 6,186 genocide victims have been revealed by the DNA analysis. (Source: ICMP)

ZALAZJE MASS GRAVE - EXCAVATION IN PROGRESS

2009-11-21T12:19:00.000-08:00

For four days, members of the expert team working for the office of the Cantonal Prosecutor in Tuzla and the Institute for Missing Persons, have worked on the Zalazje mass grave. They uncovered more skeletal remains and some clothing.

According to Danica Kovacevic-Arapovic, this is a secondary mass grave, but there is still no information as to how many remains of the Srebrenica civilians may be found in the grave.

Sadik Selimovic, member of the Institute for Missing Persons, told us that the Zalazje mass grave contains remains of the Srebrenica genocide victims that were captured in the vicinity of Bratunac, killed in Kravica, and then buried in the village of Glogova.

"This is a specific mass grave. We can not reliably say what else we may find in the grave, but we assume that we will find more incomplete bodies. Our findings indicate that the bodies of the slain were taken from the primary mass grave in Glogova and then relocated to the mass grave Zeleni Jadar and other locations," - said Selimović.

Given the size of the grave, 25 x 3.5 meters, it is expected to yield a large number of civilians killed in the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995.

From 1992-1995 Serbs from heavily militarized villages around Srebrenica had forced thousands of Bosniak refugees to live in the Srebrenica ghetto with little or no means of survival. Serb Army stationed around Srebrenica never demilitarized, even though they were required to do so under the 1993 demilitarization agreements.

Furthermore, Serbs around Srebrenica constantly attacked neighbouring Bosnian Muslim villages, frequently bombarding them from air and with Serbian airplanes. More than 400 Bosnian Muslim villages were destroyed around Srebrenica in 1992 with at least 11,000 Bosniaks killed in Podrinje (region encompasing Srebrenica) same year.

In July 1995 the Bosnian Serb army staged a brutal takeover of Srebrenica and its surrounding area, where they proceeded to perpetrate genocide. Bosnian Serb soldiers and paramilitary thugs, both groups commonly known as "Chetniks," separated Bosniak families, forcibly expelled 30,000 Bosniaks, and summarily executed at least 8,372 Bosnian Muslims - boys, men, and the elderly. Srebrenica genocide is remembered the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

CONTINUING STRUGGLES FOR BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA

2009-11-20T19:20:00.000-08:00

The following is the latest report on political and social tensions and the role of the international community in Bosnia-Herzegovina published by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. The mission of the Center is to promote in-depth coverage of international affairs, focusing on topics that have been under-reported, mis-reported - or not reported at all. Hosts: Kira Kay and Jason Maloney.

Tip: Scroll your browser window to the right --->

Tip: Scroll your browser window to the right --->

FACT: 25,000 DOCUMENTED RAPES OF WOMEN IN BOSNIA

2009-11-20T00:01:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: Traumatized woman, Bosnian Muslim rape victim. Photo taken by Anthony LLoyd, noted war correspondent and former British Army officer. Image used for Fair Use Only and in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 for research and educational purposes. ↓

The NGO "Woman - Victim of War" (Žena - Žrtva Rata) has documented more than 25,000 rapes of women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, many of them occurred in the Srebrenica region before and during the Srebrenica genocide. There are also 52 documented rapes of men. The president of the NGO, Bakira Hasecic, said that that one raped woman from Brcko had witnessed more than 40 girls aged from 13 to 18 being repeatedly raped by Serbian soldiers in that town. Hasecic called on all women and men who had been raped or sexually molested during the Bosnian war to contact the “Woman – Victim of War” association, adding that confidentiality is always fully guaranteed. If you were raped, it's not your fault - there is nothing to be ashamed of. Do not feel guilty. Come forward and tell us your story.

Children of Rape Victims
(includes photo presentation)

The NGO "Woman - Victim of War" estimates that approximately 1,000 children were born to women who had been sexually abused during the war. Some adopted children were on the verge of suicide after their biological mothers denied any contact with them. One raped woman who kept her child, suffered a nervous breakdown and killed the baby after a few months.

Raped women are invisible victims of the Bosnian war and they are not counted in the statistics of the indirect war victims. These statistics are compiled and published by the Research and Documentation Center [RDC] in Sarajevo. To drop them an E-mail and ask "Why" click here.

WATCH PHOTO PRESENTATION by Kate Holt:
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Children of Rape by visiting this link:
kateholt.com/galleries/editorial/bosnia-herzegovina

Related research (highly recommended):
+ Breaking the wall of silence: mass rapes in Bosnia [read...]
+ Serbs raped Bosniak women during Srebrenica genocide [read...]
+ Abandoned by their families, forgotten by the state [read...]
+ Rapes of women during Srebrenica massacres [read...]
+ Srebrenica child raped, hung [read...]
+ Can genocide be committed by forcibly expelling women & children? [read...]
+ Bosnian genocide rape victims suffer in silence [read...]
+ Effects and Aftermath of Rape @ Wikipedia

MAY PATRIARCH PAVLE BURN IN HELL

2009-11-19T16:57:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: Patriarch Pavle (right) and Radovan Karadzic (left)

PATRIARCH PAVLE I, SUPPORTER OF KARADZIC AND MLADIC, ESCAPES "EARTHLY JUDGMENT"

After hearing Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle I, who has just died in his 96th year, praised as an “ecumenist” by the Pope and a “man of peace” by the German Catholic Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker (GfbV) / Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) has expressed regret that the Serbian Orthodox Church’s Patriarch has escaped earthly judgment.

GfbV/STP President Tilman Zülch observed that “Pavle maintained very close and friendly relations with the two major Bosnian Serb war criminals Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic during the time when they were imprisoning more than 200,000 Bosnian Muslims and Catholics in concentration and detention camps and 20,000 Bosnian Muslim women were being systematically raped”. The Patriarch remained silent as Serbian troops commanded by the two war criminals destroyed centuries-old mosques and madrassas (a total of 1186) and over 500 Catholic churches and other religious buildings.

Throughout Serb-occupied Bosnia only a single mosque was left standing. Pavle, who conferred his blessing on the war criminals on a number of occasions, later sought to gloss over his support for genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina later with vague declarations in support of peace. Pavle’s macabre involvement is illustrated by the photograph above which shows him blessing Radovan Karadžić (currently before the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague) and Ratko Mladić (protected for years by the Serbian authorities and the Serbian Army).

“We are still waiting for Archbishop Zollitsch, a child survivor of a Tito concentration camps where thousands of Danube Swabian women and children perished, to show some respect at least for the victims of Sarajevo and Srebrenica”, Zülch added.

GfbV President Tilman Zülch can be contacted for further information on 0151-15309888 or 0171-7100713

VIDIKOVAC MASS GRAVE EXPECTED TO HOLD LARGE NUMBER OF SREBRENICA VICTIMS

2009-11-18T16:00:00.000-08:00

Remains of the Srebrenica genocide victims were found on Wednesday in a new mass grave located near the eastern Bosnian town, an official is quoted as saying by the Federal News Agency (FENA).

The grave, measuring 25 by three metres (82 by 10 feet), is "secondary", meaning that the victims' remains were moved there from other sites in a bid to cover up the crime, local prosecutor Fatima Hadzibeganovic said.

Due to the grave's size it is expected to hold a large number of victims, she said, without providing further details. The grave is located near the hamlet of Vidikovac, in Srebrenica's surroundings.

From 1992-1995 Serbs from heavily militarized villages around Srebrenica had forced thousands of Bosniak refugees to live in the Srebrenica ghetto with little or no means of survival. Serb Army stationed around Srebrenica never demilitarized, even though they were required to do so under the 1993 demilitarization agreements.

Furthermore, Serbs around Srebrenica constantly attacked neighbouring Bosnian Muslim villages, frequently bombarding them from air and with Serbian airplanes. More than 400 Bosnian Muslim villages were destroyed around Srebrenica in 1992 with at least 11,000 Bosniaks killed in Podrinje (region encompasing Srebrenica) same year.

In July 1995 the Bosnian Serb army staged a brutal takeover of Srebrenica and its surrounding area, where they proceeded to perpetrate genocide. Bosnian Serb soldiers and paramilitary thugs, both groups commonly known as "Chetniks," separated Bosniak families, forcibly expelled 30,000 Bosniaks, and summarily executed at least 8,372 Bosnian Muslims - boys, men, and the elderly. Srebrenica genocide is remembered the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

SREBRENICA DEMILITARIZATION AGREEMENTS

2009-11-14T15:30:00.000-08:00

UNDERSTANDING THE "1993"
SREBRENICA DEMILITARIZATION AGREEMENTS

Did you know? Bosnian Serb forces around Srebrenica were obligated to demilitarize, but they constantly violated the 1993 demilitarization agreements. Specific instructions from United Nations Headquarters in New York stated the Serbs should withdraw their heavy weapons before the Bosniaks gave up their weapons. The Serbs refused to honor their part of the demilitarization agreement and they never did withdraw their heavy weapons. In fact, "following the adoption of Security Council resolution 836 (1993), the Bosnian Serbs continued to bombard the safe areas at about the same rate as before. In Sarajevo, for example, Serb shells continued to land in the safe area at an average rate of approximately 1,000 per day." The Siege of Srebrenica lasted from April 1992 to July 1995 and ended with the Srebrenica genocide.

Source: The following are excerpts from the United Nations' Report on The Fall of Srebrenica (1999) [A/54/549].

Security Council resolution 819 (1993)

Before the Security Council had time to finalize its position on the concept of safe areas, events on the ground demanded further action. The High Commissioner for Refugees wrote to the Secretary-General on 2 April 1993 that the people of Srebrenica were convinced "that the Bosnian Serbs [would] pursue their military objective to gain control of Srebrenica" (S/25519). She noted that evacuation of non-combatants from Srebrenica was one option, and that these people were "desperate to escape to safety because they see no other prospect than death if they remain where they are." She stressed, however, that the Bosnian Government authorities were "opposed to continued evacuation of people, which they see as designed to empty the town of its women and children in order to facilitate a subsequent Serbian offensive." Under the circumstances, Mrs. Ogata concluded:

"I believe we are faced with two options, if we are to save the lives of the people trapped in Srebrenica. The first is to immediately enhance international presence, including that of UNPROFOR, in order to turn the enclave into an area protected by the United Nations, and inject life-sustaining assistance on a scale much greater than being permitted at the moment. ... Failing that, the only other option would be to organize a large-scale evacuation of the endangered population in Srebrenica." (S/25519)

The Secretary-General transmitted the High Commissioner's letter to the Security Council, after which extended consultations took place among the members of the Council. Broadly, the members of the Council that were members of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, represented principally by Pakistan and Venezuela, proposed strong action "to reverse Serb aggression," and initially favoured two lines of approach: tightening sanctions on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and lifting the arms embargo established under Council resolution 713 (1991) as it applied to the Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Explaining the latter proposal, the non-aligned countries argued that the embargo was hampering the right to self-defence of the Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The non-aligned countries tabled a draft resolution to this effect, which the president of the Council decided would be put to the vote on 26 April. Events on the ground, however, were overtaking the Security Council's consultations. On 13 April 1993, Serb commanders informed the representative on UNHCR that they would enter Srebrenica within two days unless the town surrendered and its Bosniak population was evacuated. On 16 April, the Secretary-General's Special Political Adviser, Chinmaya Gharekhan (who represented the Secretary-General in the Security Council), informed the Council that he had been in contact with the Force Commander of UNPROFOR and that United Nations military observers stationed in Srebrenica had reported that the town had not yet fallen, but that the authorities there had offered to surrender on three conditions, namely, that the wounded soldiers be airlifted out; that all civilians be evacuated; and that safe passage be guaranteed to all military personnel, who would walk to Tuzla.

There was considerable confusion in the Security Council, with the representative of one Member State indicating that he had not heard from national sources that Srebrenica had already fallen. After extended debate, the Council on 16 April adopted a draft resolution tabled by the non-aligned members, as resolution 819 (1993) in which it demanded that "all parties and others treat Srebrenica and its surroundings as a safe area, which should be free from any armed attack or any other hostile act." It also demanded "the immediate cessation of armed attacks by Bosnian Serb paramilitary units against Srebrenica and their immediate withdrawal from the areas surrounding Srebrenica," and further demanded that "the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia immediately cease the supply of military arms, equipment and services to the Bosnian Serb paramilitary units in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina." However, no specific restrictions were put on the activities of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Upon learning of the resolution, UNPROFOR expressed concern to the Secretariat that the regime could not be implemented without the consent of both parties which, given Serb dominance, would certainly require Bosnian Government forces to lay down their weapons.

The Security Council, although acting under Chapter VII of the Charter, had provided no resources or mandate for UNPROFOR to impose its demands on the parties. Rather, it requested the Secretary-General, "with a view to monitoring the humanitarian situation in the safe area, to take immediate steps to increase the presence of the United Nations Protection Force in Srebrenica and its surroundings."

Thus, the Security Council appeared to rule our Mrs. Ogata's evacuation option, and instead condemned and rejected "the deliberate actions of the Bosnian Serb party to force the evacuation of the civilian population from Srebrenica and its surrounding areas as well as from other parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of its overall abhorrent campaign of 'ethnic cleansing.'"

Following the adoption of resolution 819 (1993), and on the basis of consultations with members of the Council, the Secretariat informed the UNPROFOR Force Commander that, in its view, the resolution, calling as it did for the parties to take certain actions, created no military obligations for UNPROFOR to establish or protect such a safe area.

Srebrenica demilitarization agreement of 18 April 1993

While the Security Council was speaking out strongly against the actions of the Bosnian Serbs, UNPROFOR was confronted with the reality that the Serbs were in a position of complete military dominance around Srebrenica, and that the town and its population were at risk. UNPROFOR commanders, therefore, took a different approach from the Council, convincing the Bosniak commanders that they should sign an agreement in which Bosniak forces would give up their arms to UNPROFOR in return for the promise of a ceasefire, the insertion of an UNPROFOR company into Srebrenica, the evacuation of the seriously wounded and seriously ill, unimpeded access for UNHCR and ICRS, and certain other provisions (see S/25700). Representatives of the Bosnian Government were apparently divided as to how to proceed. According to General [Sefer] Halilovic, then Commander of the ARBiH, President [Alija] Izetbegovic was in favour of the UNPROFOR proposal, which, as he understood it, meant that the Bosniaks would hand their weapons over to UNPROFOR in return for UNPROFOR protection.

The text of the agreement was negotiated in Sarajevo on 17 April 1993, and was signed by General [Sefer] Halilovic and General [Ratko] Mladic early in the morning of 18 April. The Force Commander witnessed the agreement on behalf of UNPROFOR. The agreement laid down the terms under which Srebrenica would be demilitarized, though it did not define the area to be demilitarized. Halilovic has since stated that he understood the agreement to cover only the urban area of Srebrenica, and not the rural parts of the enclave. UNPROFOR seems also to have understood the agreement in this way. The Serbs, however, did not. The agreement also called for the deployment of UNPROFOR troops into the area by 1100 hours on 18 April in order to secure a landing site for helicopters which would evacuate wounded personnel from Srebrenica; for the monitoring of the ceasefire in Srebrenica and those areas outside the town from which direct fire weapons could be brought to bear; and for the establishment of liaison with authorized military leaders of both sides.

Approximately 170 UNPROFOR troops, principally from the Canadian contingent, deployed into the Srebrenica area on 18 April, establishing a substantial UNPROFOR presence there for the first time. The Canadian force then proceeded to oversee the demilitarization of the town of Srebrenica, though not of the surrounding area. Halilovic has stated that he ordered the Bosniaks in Srebrenica not to hand over any serviceable weapons or ammunition. The Bosniaks accordingly handed over approximately 300 weapons, a large number of which were non-serviceable; they also handed over a small number of heavy weapons, for which there was no significant amount of ammunition. A large number of light weapons were removed to areas outside the town [for the purpose of defending the enclave in case of the Bosnian Serb attack].

The Secretariat informed the Force Commander that, in the light of the views of several Security Council members, he should not pursue the demilitarization process in Srebrenica with undue zeal, ruling out, for example, house-to-house searches for weapons. On 21 April UNPROFOR released a press statement entitled "Demilitarization of Srebrenica a success." That document stated that "UNPROFOR troops, civilian police and military observers had been deployed in Srebrenica since 18 April to collect weapons, ammunitions, mines, explosives and combat supplies and that by noon today they had completed the task of demilitarizing the town." The statement noted further that "almost 500 sick and wounded had also been evacuated from Srebrenica by helicopters and humanitarian aid convoys have been entering the town since Sunday." The Force Commander of UNPROFOR was quoted as saying, "I can confirm that from noon today the town has been demilitarized .... The [UNPROFOR] team prepared a final inventory of all the collected weapons and munitions, which were then destroyed by UNPROFOR."

Security Council mission to Srebrenica and further demilitarization agreement of 8 May 1993

Following the adoptions of Security Council resolution 819 (1993), members of the Council had a rare opportunity to assess the situation on the ground first hand, when a Security Council mission led by Diego Arria, Permanent Representative of Venezuela to the United Nations, arrived in Srebrenica on 25 April [1993]. On arrival in Srebrenica, the mission members noted that whereas the Council in resolution 819 (1993) had demanded that certain steps be taken by the Bosnian Serbs, the UNPROFOR-brokered agreement of 18 April 1993 had required the Bosniaks to disarm. Confronted with the reality of the situation on the ground, the Council members appeared to support the UNPROFOR course of action. In their report submitted shortly upon their return to New York, the members of the Security Council mission wrote that "the alternative could have been a massacre of 25,000 people. It definitely was an extraordinary emergency situation that had prompted UNPROFOR to act ... There is no doubt that had this agreement not been reached, most probably a massacre would have taken place, which justified the efforts of the UNPROFOR Commander" (see S/25700). The Council members then condemned the Serbs for perpetrating "a slow-motion process of genocide." Comparing the approach of the Council with that of UNPROFOR, a Canadian UNPROFOR officer told the Council members that "even though the Security Council is obviously an important organ of the United Nations it is of no importance to the Serbs in the area" (ibid.). In its report the Security Council mission noted the discrepancy between the Council resolutions and the situation on the ground. It is stated that "even though Security Council resolution 819 (1993) declared the city [of Srebrenica] a safe area, the actual situation obviously does not correspond to either the spirit or the intent of the resolution." The mission then stated that "Serb forces must withdraw to points from which they cannot attack, harass or terrorize the town. UNPROFOR should be in a position to determine the related parameters. The mission believes, as does UNPROFOR, that the actual 4.5 by 0.5 kms decided as a safe area should be greatly expanded." How this was to be done was not indicated. The mission report recommended that Gorazde, Zepa, Tuzla and Sarajevo also be declared safe areas, "as an act of Security Council preventive diplomacy." The report concluded by recognizing that "such a decision would require a larger UNPROFOR presence, a revised mandate to encompass ceasefire/safe areas monitoring and different rules of engagement." It proposed the gradual introduction of measures that could, if the Serbs ignored the integrity of the safe ares, lead to "eventual consideration" of "military strike enforcement measures."

On the ground, events were developing in a different direction. The agreement witnessed by the Force Commander on 18 april [1993] was followed by a more comprehensive agreement on 8 May, in which General [Sefer] Halilovic and General [Ratko] Mladic agreed on measures covering the whole of the Srebrenica enclave and the adjacent enclave of Zepa. Under the terms of the new agreement, Bosniak forces within the enclave would hand over their weapons, ammunition and mines to UNPROFOR, after which Serbs "heavy weapons and units that constituted a menace to the demilitarized zones which will have been established in Zepa and Srebrenica will be withdrawn." Unlike the earlier agreement, the agreement of 8 May stated specifically that Srebrenica was to be considered a "demilitarized zone," as referred to in article 60 of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I).

Security Council resolution 824 (1993)

As had been the case from 16-18 April, the ceasefire negotiations of 6 to 8 May took place simultaneously with consultations of the Security Council. A draft resolution presented by the non-aligned members welcomed the recommendations of the Security Council mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and proposed expanding the safe area regime to include the city of Sarajevo, "and other such threatened areas, in particular the towns of Tuzla, Zepa, Gorazde and Bihac." During the Security Council consultations of 5 May, the Secretary-General's Special Political Adviser remarked that the Secretary-General would normally be requested to make recommendations on the resources he would need to ensure that the status of those towns as safe areas was respected. He added that UNPROFOR could not be expected to take on this additional responsibility within its existing resources and that it would need at least one brigade in each town declared a safe area. Quite simply, he concluded, the Secretary-General did not have the means to implement the draft resolution.

On 6 May, members of the Security Council learned that the "Bosnian Serb Assembly" had rejected the Vance-Owen Peace Plan. The Council then adopted the draft resolution under discussion as resolution 824 (1993), by which it declared that Sarajevo, and other towns, such as Tuzla, Zepa, Gorazde and Bihac, should be treated as safe areas by all the parties concerned and should be free from armed attacks and from any other hostile act. It also declared that in the safe areas the following should be observed:

(a) The immediate cessation of armed attacks or any hostile act against the safe areas, and the withdrawal of all Bosnian Serb military or paramilitary units from those towns to a distance wherefrom they ceased to constitute a menace to their security and that of their inhabitants to be monitored by United Nations military observers;

(b) Full respect by all parties of the rights of UNPROFOR and the international agencies to free and unimpeded access to all safe areas in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and full respect for the safety of personnel engaged in these operations.

As in resolution 819 (1993), all of the Security Council's demands in resolution 824 (1993) were directed at the Bosnian Serbs. UNPROFOR, as before, stated that it could not implement the resolution unless there were an agreement between the parties or unless it were given the resources to enforce it in the face of Serb opposition. References to enforcement measures, which had been proposed in a draft resolution submitted by members of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, however, had not been included in the text of resolution 824 (1993). Instead, the Council authorized the Secretary-General to strengthen UNPROFOR with 50 additional unarmed United Nations military observers.

Noting the discrepancy between the agreement of 8 May 1993 that had been negotiated on the ground by UNPROFOR and the resolution concurrently adopted by the Security Council, the Secretariat explained to UNPROFOR that the Council had laid great emphasis in resolution 824 (1993) on the withdrawal of the Bosnian Serbs from their positions threatening the "safe areas." The Secretariat believed that it was essential that UNPROFOR reiterate its determination to ensure the implementation of those parts of the agreement concerning the Serb withdrawal from around the safe area. The Secretariat added that the implied sequence in the agreement - Government forces disarming first, followed by a Serb withdrawal later - would be unacceptable to the Security Council.

Security Council resolution 836 (1993)

France, the Russian Federation, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States then sponsored a draft resolution based substantially on the French memorandum of 19 May. The Security Council began deliberations on it on 1 June, and voted on the draft resolution on 4 June 1993. It was adopted by 13 votes in favour, with two abstentions, as resolution 836 (1993). The following three paragraphs of the resolution, which was adopted under Chapter VII of the Charter, were seen as particularly important:

5. ... decides to extend ... the mandate of the United Nations Protection Force in order to enable it, in the safe areas referred to in resolution 824 (1993), to deter attacks against the safe areas, to monitor the ceasefire, to promote the withdrawal of military or paramilitary units other than those of the Government of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and to occupy some key points on the ground, in addition to participating in the delivery of humanitarian relief to the population as provided for in resolution 776 (1992) of 14 September 1992;

9. Authorizes the Force, in addition to the mandate defined in resolutions 770 (1992) of 13 August 1992 and 776 (1992), in carrying out the mandate defined in paragraph 5 above, acting in self-defence, to take the necessary measures, including the use of force, in reply to bombardments against the safe areas by any of the parties or to armed incursion into them or in the event of any deliberate obstruction in or around those areas to the freedom of movement of the Force or of protected humanitarian convoys;

10. Decides that ... Member States, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, may take, under the authority of the Security Council and subject to close coordination with the Secretary-General and the Force, all necessary measures, through the use of air power, in and around the safe areas in Bosnia and Herzegovina, to support the Force in the performance of its mandate set out in paragraphs 5 and 9 above.

It is essential to note that the resolution explicitly eschewed the use of the words "protect" and "defend," and asked UNPROFOR only "to occupy some key points on the ground" and linked the use of force to the phrase "acting in self-defence." As the following section indicates, some members of the Council nonetheless took a broader view of the resolution.

Reluctance to use force to deter attacks on safe areas

Following the adoption of Security Council resolution 836 (1993), the Bosnian Serbs continued to bombard the safe areas at about the same rate as before. In Sarajevo, for example, Serb shells continued to land in the safe area at an average rate of approximately 1,000 per day, usually into civilian-inhabited areas, often in ways calculated to maximize civilian casualties, sometimes at random, and only occasionally for identifiably military purposes. This pattern, which had begun on 6 April 1992, continued, with lulls of varying lengths, until Operation Deliberate Force in August 1995. The Serbs also continued to obstruct freedom of movement to all of the safe areas, both for UNPROFOR and for humanitarian convoys, imposing a system of clearances, the principal effect of which was to limit the effectiveness of UNPROFOR and to slow down the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Shortly after the adoption of resolution 836 (1993), the Secretariat convened a meeting of the sponsors of the resolution (France, the Russian Federation, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States) and Canada. The Secretariat made an oral presentation in which it was stated that approximately 32,000 additional ground troops would be required to implement the safe area concept. This drew strong opposition, particularly from the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom, who insisted that the preferred approach would be closer to the "light option" presented in the French memorandum, which would entail some 5,000 additional troops.

The Secretariat then informed UNPROFOR that none of the sponsors was willing to contribute any additional troops for UNPROFOR, and that none of them seemed to envisage a force capable of effectively defending those areas. The Secretariat believed that there was unanimity among the sponsors that the extension of the UNPROFOR mandate to include a capacity to deter attack against the safe areas should not be construed as signifying deployment in sufficient strength to repel attacks by military force. UNPROFOR's major deterrent capacity, rather than being a function of military strength, would essentially flow from its presence in the safe areas. The Secretariat referred to the positive example of Srebrenica, where it was thought that the success of the approach had been demonstrated. The Secretariat added that the role of UNPROFOR "to promote the withdrawal of [Serb] military and paramilitary forces" was said to call for persuasion rather than coercion. The Secretariat informed UNPROFOR that the resolution's sponsors shared the Secretariat's own concern that any air strikes would pose grave dangers to UNPROFOR personnel and the humanitarian convoys and should, therefore, be initiated with the greatest restraint and, essentially, in self-defence.

Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to resolution 836 (1993) (S/25939)

The Secretary-General submitted the first of several reports in which he outlines his views on the implementation of the safe area concept on 14 June. He noted that "in order to ensure full respect for the safe areas, the Force Commander of UNPROFOR estimated an additional troop requirement at an indicative level of approximately 34,000 to obtain deterrence through strength," but went on to note that "it would be possible to start implementing the resolution under a 'light option' envisaging a minimal troop reinforcement of around 7,600. While this option cannot, in itself, completely guarantee the defence of the safe areas, it relies on the threat of air action against any of the belligerents" (S/25939, para. 5).

Concerning Srebrenica, the Secretary-General stated that the existing force levels would not have to be enhanced under the light option. He did state, however, that "since it is assumed that UNPROFOR ground troops will not be sufficient to resist a concentrated assault on any of the safe areas, particular emphasis must be placed on the availability of the air-strike capability provided by Member States. This would require the deployment of Forward Air Controllers (FACs) in order that the force-multiplying characteristics of air power may be fully exploited if necessary" (S/25939), para. 4). Forward Air Controllers were later deployed in all the safe areas.

By its resolution 844 (1993) of 18 June 1993, the Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the Charter, intel alia, approved the report of the Secretary-General, decided to authorize the deployment of the additional 7,600 troops proposed under the light option, and reaffirmed its decision in paragraph 10 of resolution 836 (1993) on the use of air power.

* * * * *

Role of Bosniak forces on the ground

Criticisms have also been leveled at the Bosniaks in Srebrenica, among them that they did not fully demilitarize and that they did not do enough to defend the enclave. To a degree, these criticisms appear to be contradictory. Concerning the first criticism, it is right to note that the Bosnian Government had entered into demilitarization agreements with the Bosnian Serbs. They did this with the encouragement of the United Nations. While it is also true that the Bosnian fighters in Srebrenica did not fully demilitarize, they did demilitarize enough for UNPROFOR to issue a press release, on 21 April 1993, saying that the process had been a success. Specific instructions from United Nations Headquarters in New York stated that UNPROFOF should not be too zealous in searching for Bosniak weapons and, later, that the Serbs should withdraw their heavy weapons before the Bosniaks gave up their weapons. The Serbs never did withdraw their heavy weapons.

Concerning the accusation that the Bosniaks did not do enough to defend Srebrenica, military experts consulted in connection with this report were largely in agreement that the Bosniaks could not have defended Srebrenica for long in the face of a concerted attack supported by armour and artillery. The defenders were undisciplined, untrained, poorly armed, totally isolated force, lying prone in the crowded valley of Srebrenica. They were ill-equipped even to train themselves in the use of the few heavier weapons that had been smuggled to them by their authorities. After over three years of siege, the population was demoralized, afraid and often hungry. The only leader of stature was absent when the attack occurred. Surrounding them, controlling all the high ground, handsomely equipped with the heavy weapons and logistical train of the Yugoslav army, were the Bosnian Serbs. There was no contest.

Despite the odds against them, the Bosniaks requested UNPROFOR to return to them the weapons they had surrendered under the demilitarization agreements of 1993. They requested those weapons at the beginning of the Serb offensive, but the request was rejected by the UNPROFOR because, as one commander explained, “it was our responsibility to defend the enclave, not theirs.” Given the limited number and poor quality of Bosniak weapons held by UNPROFOR, it seems unlikely that releasing those weapons to the Bosniaks would have made a significant difference to the outcome of the battle; but the Bosniaks were under attack at that time, they wanted to resist with whatever means they could muster, and UNPROFOR denied them access to some of their own weapons. With the benefit of hindsight, this decision seems to be particularly ill-advised, given UNPROFOR’s own unwillingness consistently to advocate force as a means deterring attacks on the enclave.

Many have accused the Bosniak forces of withdrawing from the enclave as the Serb forces advanced on the day of its fall. However, it must be remembered that on the eve of the final Serb assault the Dutchbat commander urged the Bosniaks to withdraw from defensive positions south of Srebrenica town – the direction from which the Serbs were advancing. He did so because he believed that NATO aircraft would soon be launching widespread air strikes against the advancing Serbs.

A third accusation leveled at the Bosniak defenders of Srebrenica is that they provoked the Serb offensive by attacking out of that safe area. Even though this accusation is often repeated by international sources, there is no credible evidence to support it. Dutchbat personnel on the ground at the time assessed that the few “raids” the Bosniaks mounted out of Srebrenica were of little or no military significance. These raids were often organized in order to gather food, as the Serbs had refused access for humanitarian convoys into the enclave. Even Serb sources approached in the context of this report acknowledged that the Bosniak forces in Srebrenica posed no significant military threat to them. The biggest attack the Bosniaks launched out of Srebrenica during the more than two years which is was designated a safe area appears to have been the raid on the village of Visnjica, on 26 June 1995, in which several houses were burned, up to four Serbs were killed and approximately 100 sheep were stolen. In contrast, the Serbs overran the enclave two weeks later, driving tens of thousands from their homes, and summarily executing thousands of men and boys. The Serbs repeatedly exaggerated the extent of the raids out of Srebrenica as a pretext for the prosecution of a central war aim: to create geographically contiguous and ethnically pure territory along the Drina, while freeing their troops to fight in other parts of the country. The extent to which this pretext was accepted at face value by international actors and observers reflected the prism of “moral equivalency” through which the conflict in Bosnia was viewed by too many for too long.

Continue your research, download Full Text of this Report:

Please note that the Report was published in 1999 and it contains some minor flaws, like the inaccurate allegation that there was no starvation in Srebrenica. Later judgments by the Hague Tribunal confirmed that the Bosniak population of Srebrenica started dying from starvation in Winter 1992/93 and also in months before the fall of Srebrenica in 1995. For example, the judgement in Naser Oric case specifically states that: there was a constant and serious shortage of food causing starvation to peak in the winter of 1992/1993. Numerous people died or were in an extremely emaciated state due to malnutrition." Full copy of the United Nation's Report on the Fall of Srebrenica (15 November 1999) can be downloaded from www.un.org/peace/srebrenica.pdf (113 pages long).

SARAJEVO TERRORIST DRAGOMIR MILOSEVIC GETS ONLY 29 YEARS, 4 YEARS CUT ON APPEAL

2009-11-12T16:29:00.001-08:00

Imagine this: Bosnian Serb General Dragomir Milosevic laughed after the Court gave him a slap on the wrist. The Appeals Chamber, presided by a very biased Judge Fausto Pocar cut Milosevic's sentence by 4 years. Pocar happens to be the same judge who reversed Vidoje Blagojevic's Srebrenica genocide conviction. ↓

Serbs still responsible for the Sarajevo Markale massacre:
Today, the Appeals Chamber reduced Dragomir Milosevic's sentence from 33 to only 29 years. His earlier convictions on counts of terrorism, murder and other inhumane acts - conducted during Sarajevo's terror campaign of sniping and shelling - have been partially upheld. Apparently, he was receiving medical treatment in Belgrade between 6 August and 10 September 1995, so the appellate judges acquitted him for ordering the shelling of the Markale Market on 28 August same year. He laughed. The prosecution's request for life imprisonment was effectively dismissed. Serbian ultra-nationalists will probably use the latest acquittal as an ammunition to continue arguing that the Markale Market massacre was "staged"; however, the Serb Army still remains responsible for this atrocious crime. The Appeals Chamber DID NOT reverse the earlier [Trial Chamber's] finding that the Serb Army was responsible for the Markale Market massacre. The Appeals Chamber simply acquitted Gen Milosevic for ordering the attack, because he was not in Sarajevo at the time of the massacre. Instead, the position of authority on the ground belonged to the Chief of Staff, Čedomir Sladoje (source: Appeals Judgement). ↓

Learn more about the Siege of Sarajevo from the award-winning journalist Roger Richards. Read this and send it to your friends, E-book: Remember Sarajevo by Roger Richards.

PHOTO: Almira Lugic, 12-years-old, lies in Kosevo Hospital with a grave stomach wound caused from a Serb shell that fell as she was collecting water, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, February 1993. The Siege of Sarajevo is remembered as the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare. CREDITS: Roger Richards. (Photo posted with permission.)

PHOTO: Morgue attendants lift the body of a 16-year-old girl, killed on a Sunday morning when a Serb shell hit her house and a piece of shrapnel cracked her skull open, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, February 1993. CREDITS: Roger Richards. (Photo posted with permission.)

PHOTO: The bodies of the Sarajevo siege victims lie in the morgue at Kosevo Hospital, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, February 1993. CREDITS: Roger Richards. (Photo posted with permission.)

PHOTO: A morgue attendant adjusts a sheet covering the body of a man, one of several victims killed by a Serb artillery shell during the Bosnian Serb siege of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, summer 1992. Almost 2,000 children, and over 10,000 people in total were killed in Sarajevo during the 3-1/2 year siege. CREDITS: Roger Richards. (Photo posted with permission.)

PHOTO: Bodies of Bosniak children in Sarajevo morgue killed by Serb snipers during the siege of Sarajevo - the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare. CREDITS: Maud S. Beelman. (Photo used under Fair Use policy as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law for non-commercial and educational purposes.)

PHOTO: Two Bosniak women who were shot by a Serb sniper lie in the emergency room at Sarajevo's Kosevo Hospital, 1992. CREDITS: Roger Richards. (Photo posted with permission.)

TRUTH ABOUT IBRAN MUSTAFIC & PLANNED CHAOS

2009-11-10T18:07:00.000-08:00

[Feel free to republish]

QUESTIONABLE CREDIBILITY OF IBRAN MUSTAFIC

Quick intro: We learn from several Srebrenica massacre survivors that Ibran Mustafic was suspected of spying for the Serbs in the war-torn Srebrenica. He allegedly had close ties with Radovan Karadzic's leadership and was in constant touch with Momcilo Krajisnik - one of key members of Karadzic's political cabinet. The so called NGO "Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinje" was formed by Mustafic himself for the purpose of promoting his book; the NGO was comprised of only two people... ↓

Book: Planirani Haos 1990-1996 / Planned Chaos: 1990-1996
Author: Ibran Mustafic
Reviewed by: Srebrenica Genocide Blog

The prevailing theme of Ibran Mustafic's book "Planirani Haos" (Planned Chaos) rests on a theory that the former president of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegovic, conspired to sacrifice Srebrenica for the purpose of forcing NATO intervention and exchanging Srebrenica for the Serb-held territory around Sarajevo, e.g. Vogosca.

In an emotionally charged diatribe, Mustafic accuses Izetbegovic of working in the interests of the Serbs. Izetbegovic's goal, according to Mustafic, was the destruction of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and this plan could only be achieved with the division of B&H, and that's exactly what Izetbegovic did. Therefore, Mustafic refers to Izetbegovic as a "gravedigger" of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Sounds familiar?

These kinds of allegations play well into the hands of Serbian ultranationalists who tirelessly seek new conspiracy theories to enhance their genocide denial skills - or to pin the blame for the massacre to somebody else. The entire book can be summarized in one sentence, which - in the words of Ibran Mustafic - looks like this, quote:

"Alija nd SDA [Party for Democratic Action] is a traitor and a throat-cutter of his own people in Srebrenica; he is no different than[Radovan] Karadzic, [Slobodan] Milosevic and [Ratko] Mladic, but the only difference is that we never expected anything better from them."

1993 Demilitarization agreement

Ibran Mustafic blames Naser Oric for (counter)-attacking Serb forces around Srebrenica and thus far provoking Chetniks (as he calls them) to attack back. He correctly states that the Bosniaks armed themselves in Srebrenica; however, this was a fully legitimate defense strategy since the heavily armed Serb forces around Srebrenica refused to demilitarize. The Bosnian Government had entered into demilitarization agreements with the Bosnian Serbs in 1993. According to the Agreement, the Serbs should withdraw their heavy weapons before the Bosniaks gave up their weapons (see here). The Serbs refused to demilitarize.

The Serbs side never honored anything they signed with respect to the demilitarization agreements. Instead of demilitarizing around the Srebrenica enclave, Serb military and paramilitary troops continued arming themselves and using surrounding Serb villages as bases from which they launched attacks on neighboring Bosniak villages and the town of Srebrenica. Bosniak side was, therefore, unwilling to fully demilitarize.

Hearsay against Naser Oric

Serbian ultra-nationalist sources repeatedly cite Ibran Mustafic's book as an evidence of alleged war crimes perpetrated by Naser Oric against heavily armed Serbian thugs and gangs in villages around Srebrenica. However, Mustafic himself never witnessed Oric committing any crimes, but "heard it from other people."

The Hague Tribunal's Office of the Prosecutor indeed kept Mustafic on the list of people invited to testify against Oric, but after extensive questioning, they decided to let Mustafic go. They felt that, given numerous contradictions in Mustafic's responses, he would be a poor witness. Furthermore, he was not able to substantiate any of his allegations against Oric, because he never witnessed any of the alleged war crimes with his own eyes. He "heard it from other people," mostly from his uncle Ibrahim Mustafic and similar "he said, she said" characters. That kind of testimony doesn't count for anything. It's a hearsay.

For example, Mustafic's description of the murder of Slobodan Ilic, former Srebrenica judge who participated in the Chetnik attacks on Bosniak civilians in the area, is a second hand account that Mustafic "heard" from other people. Slobodan Ilic was apparently taken prisoner of war when Oric forces counter-attacked heavily armed Chetnik village of Zalazje. Serbs kept heavy artillery in Zalazje and shelled Srebrenica on a daily basis killing Muslim women and children. Serbs murdered more than 11,000 Bosniak civilians in Podrinje in 1992, three years before the genocide. Since Mustafic never witnessed any of Oric's alleged crimes, all these allegations fall into "he said, she said" category or hearsay. Same goes for Mustafic's second hand allegations that Oric killed Serb civilians Rada Milanovic, Andjelija and Mihajlo Stjepanovic, and Krsto and Velinka Dimitrovski. Even if he killed them, it's unfortunate, but why make such a big deal for five Serb casualties, when Serbs killed more than 11,000 Bosnian Muslim civilians in Podrinje in 1992 - three years before the genocide? Is one Serb life more worth than a thousand Bosniak lives? In order to justify Srebrenica genocide, Serbian propaganda - under the leadership of a right-wing nationalist Milivoje Ivanisevic - claimed that over 3,000 Serb civilians died around Srebrenica. The Hague Tribunal, Human Rights Watch, and the Research and Documentation Center all disagree with these grossly inflated numbers of Serbian casualties, read here.

Bill Clinton and "5000 Muslims"

In his book, Ibran Mustafic alleges thatAlija Izetbegovic told him about Bill Clinton's readiness to secure military intervention if Serbs capture Srebrenica and execute 5,000 people. Allegedly, Izetbegovic said:

"You know, I was offered by Clinton in April 1993 that the Chetnik forces enter Srebrenica, carry out a slaughter of 5,000 Muslims, and then there will be a military intervention."

Likely, what Clinton meant is that America will not sit silent if Serbs enter Srebrenica and start massacring people. Nine people comprising the Srebrenica delegation attended the meeting. Hakija Meholjic and Ibran Mustafic understood this as Izetbegovic's lack of commitment to people of Srebrenica. Soon, internal disputes would split local SDA leadership into two camps: those who believed that Sarajevo leadership was preparing to sacrifice ('sell', 'exchange') Srebrenica for the Serb-held parts of Sarajevo, and those who advocated loyalty to the central government.

Ibran Mustafic - Serbian agent?

We learn from several Srebrenica massacre survivors that Ibran Mustafic was suspected of spying for the Serbs in the war torn Srebrenica. One of his main assignments was to destabilize political situation in the Enclave. He allegedly had close ties with Radovan Karadzic's leadership and was in frequent contact with Momcilo Krajisnik - one of key Serb politicians in Karadzic's genocidal quazi-government. Mustafic survived three assassination attempts in Srebrenica.

Hakija Meholjic, former president of SDP [Social Democratic Party] for Srebrenica expressed some serious reservations about Mustafic in a 1998 interview he gave to Dani magazine. This is what he said:

"As a deputy of the SDA Ibran was a 'hawk' in the prewar assembly. He was not in Srebrenica in the beginning of the war because he was in Sarajevo. When we advanced well, despite all our internal disputes, suddenly Ibran came, somewhere from the woods.... Then he started spreading stories that our army was not good, so bit by bit there was a split among the soldiers. He wanted power again, so the SDA split into two camps. One evening someone attacked him, [and his associates] Hamed Salihovic and Hamed Efendic. Salihovic was killed then. Ibran was wounded and transported to the hospital. I was the police chief then and we wanted to carry out an inquiry. But Ibran and Hamed, as eye-witnesses, did not want to give a statement. Then there was a session of the municipal assembly at which Ibran asked to be given a radio set to talk to Momcilo Krajisnik so that Krajisnik could take him out of Srebrenica. Naturally, he was not allowed to do that. I connected these facts only later. Ibran came to 'wreck' Srebrenica while we advanced as that did not suit someone's plan, and I assume that was the SDA's plan. When Srebrenica fell he went straight to Potocari instead of going with all of us through the forest. It is difficult to explain how he managed to get out while the others were killed. Later he gave statements in Bijeljina that we killed one another. Many people who did not have any clue as to what the SDA was were killed, yet he went out and arrived in Sarajevo."

Ties to the 'underground'

Ibran Mustafic is also a member of a radical and underground Bosniak organization called "Bosanski Kongres" [Bosnian Congress]. This organization should NEVER be confused with the Congress of North American Bosniaks - an umbrella organization lobbying for the interests of the Bosniaks living in the USA and Canada.

The underground organization is headed by Dr. Muhamed Borogovac and like-minded individuals/supporters who consider the former moderate B&H president Alija Izetbegovic "a traitor" and "Chetnik." They also claim to have a 'proof' that Izetbegovic declared himself an ethnic Serb. They charge Izetbegovic of betraying the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina because he signed the Dayton Agreement, which effectively brought peace to Bosnia, but split the country into two administrative regions. Members of this organization communicate via newsletters with more than 34,000 subscribers. They also favorably reviewed and heavily promoted Mustafic's book "Planned Chaos" as a testament that Izetbegovic was just an "extended hand of Milosevic." They consider Republika Srpska to be genocidal creation [which is true], because it was built on the widespread killings, torture, ethnic cleansing and genocide against Bosniaks.

Calling for more violence

At the 10th anniversary commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide, Ibran Mustafic, came uninvited to disrupt the memorial proceedings. He took the microphone and shouted: "Long live Bosnia and Herzegovina! Death to all genocidal creations on this territory!" The survivors of the massacre were outraged. They asked him to stop calling for a new bloodshed and to leave the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial immediately. Although some people attempted to escort him from the memorial, he refused to leave, but was prevented from speaking.

Book Publisher: 'Mothers of Srebrenica'? Do Not Get Fooled

The publisher of Ibran Mustafic's "Planirani Haos" is listed as the NGO Association "Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinje." People close to the Tuzla-based NGO association Women of Srebrenica told us that the so called "Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinje" was formed by Mustafic himself for the purpose of promoting his book. This seemingly fake NGO has never been repesentive of the views of women and mothers who lost their loved ones. In fact, we were told, this NGO was comprised of only two people: Ibran Mustafic and one more woman. Mustafic formed the organization as a marketing tool for deliberate historical distortions. Shame on him!

* * * * *
Also recommended to read:

1. Horrors of the Holocaust and Srebrenica Live On
2. PHOTOS: Massacre of Bosniaks children in villages around Srebrenica
3. DOCUMENTARY: Lost Images of Srebrenica Genocide (29 minutes)
4. Militarized Serb villages around Srebrenica
5. Falsification of history and grossly inflated Serb casulaties around Srebrenica
6. Judge Theodor Meron: 40,000 Srebrenica Bosniaks Targeted for Extinction
7. Srebrenica Genocide Facts by the U.N. Tribunal
8. VIDEOS: United States Holocaust Museum - Srebrenica Genocide
9. DNA analysis supports an estimate of 8,100 victims of the Srebrenica genocide
10. Preliminary list of murdered children in the Srebrenica genocide
11. Srebrenica women were NOT spared: #1 read this and then #2 read this.
12. Bosnian Genocide - yes, it did happen. Take a look at a list of genocide judgments.
13. Serbs were required to demilitarized, but they NEVER demilitarized around Srebrenica

JAMES LUKO - DISGRACED GENOCIDE DENIER

2009-11-08T18:41:00.000-08:00

Reading Time: 12-15 minutes. [Highly Recommended]

DISCREDITED GENOCIDE DENIER JAMES LUKO IS BACK

The former Operations Officer for the Belgrade-based Hague Tribunal's Liaison Office -- and the former 'human rights investigator' who is on record for denying the Srebrenica genocide -- is back to his old tricks again. We find James Luko on NolanChart's web site in a self-described profile titled "Confessions of an Ethnic Cleanser." (1)

To quote from his own words, "Actually I've been quite quiet these years about all these issues of the OTP, ICTY [the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia], Srebrenica, UN and ICTY corruption." In his comments, he denied that genocide took place in Srebrenica and he announced that he would testify in Radovan Karadzic's case. Here is what he said:

"The crimes of Srebrenica indeed included-extra-judicial killings and ethnic cleansing by Serb forces. I agree with those charges and they were in my reports and for which I will later testify at Karadzic's hearing. However, I do not agree... that Genocide was intended or committed." (2)

Imagine this discredited genocide denier, James Luko, testifying at the trial of Radovan Karadzic and pretending to be fair and balanced? Based on his history of distortions, he is a perfect fit for the Karadzic defense. We hope Prosecutors first Google his name before they cross-examine him. According to his web site, he is writing a book regarding his 'experiences' with the UN and the Tribunal titled "Inside the Hague Tribunal" - yet another genocide denial garbage, certainly not an academic resource.

This morbidly pro-Serb activist, the former "human rights investigator" was so biased that he even filed false reports back to the U.N. trying to deny that genocide ever took place in Srebrenica. James Luko is also a man who attempted to equalize Bosniak suffering in the besieged Sarajevo with that of the Serbs who kept the city under the siege and killed 10,000 - 15,000 of its residents, 1500 of them children (photo of dead children in Sarajevo morgue, killed by Serbs during the siege of Sarajevo).

It is important to note that James Luko does not posses academic skills, experience and credentials that would enable him to judge/interpret what does and what doesn't constitute a case of genocide; he certainly never worked as an international judge. In this regard, he is incompetent. Consider the following two statement by James Luko:

"In my first report to Geneva, to the UN Centre for Human Rights, that Srebrenica, specifically was NOT Genocide for the fact that the Serb military collected and sent most women and children to Bosniak controlled territory. By no defination can this be labelled Genocide." (3)

In support of his genocide denial diatribe, he used one of the weakest arguments available:

"The genocide will be interpreted 'BROADLY' to encompass ethnic cleansing elements to make the charge stick as I fully agree that by sparing most women and children- Srebrenica simply does not qualify for the generic idea and concept of what genocide is." (4)

Let's review some facts. First of all, the ICTY's definition of what constitutes genocide is not "BROAD" but "very narrow." For example, the Court still has not ruled that genocide occured in municipalities other than Srebrenica. Second of all, women and children were not spared during the Srebrenica massacre, as James Luko would want us to believe. Women and children were forcibly expelled from the enclave, many of women were mistreated and raped. Many boys were killed, many traumatized. (see the account of a survivor of the massacre - "a very young boy emerged from the heap of bodies, covered in blood and mangled flesh"). Also see the account published by Serbian journalist Snezana Vukic at the time of the Srebrenica genocide, on July 18, 1995:

"Zarfa Turkovic says she watched through half-closed eyes, pretending to sleep, hoping she would not be next, as four Bosnian Serb men raped a 28-year old Muslim woman... 'Two took her legs and raised them up in the air, while the third began raping her. People were silent, no one moved. She was screaming and yelling and begging them to stop. They put her a rag into her mouth, and then we were just hearing silent sobs coming from her closed lips. When they finished, the woman was left there.'" (5)

Furthermore, in the Krstic Appeal ruling, the Hague Tribunal revealed why Serbs massacred only men and boys:

31. As the Trial Chamber explained, forcible transfer could be an additional means by which to ensure the physical destruction of the Bosnian Muslim community in Srebrenica. The transfer completed the removal of all Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica, thereby eliminating even the residual possibility that the Muslim community in the area could reconstitute itself. The decision not to kill the women or children may be explained by the Bosnian Serbs’ sensitivity to public opinion. In contrast to the killing of the captured military men, such an action could not easily be kept secret, or disguised as a military operation, and so carried an increased risk of attracting international censure. (6)

(For more facts about the rapes of women during the Srebrenica massacre, see our article, titled: "Were men and boys the only victims of the Srebrenica genocide?")

Blinded by his conviction that genocide never took place in Srebrenica, James Luko continues to use cheap and already highly discredited arguments in which he attempts to dispute the numbers of the killed in Srebrenica. Here is what he said:

"The scale of killings in Srebrenica, well, yes, the 8,000 figure is of course just an exaggerated number from incomplete and duplicate lists, which was VERY common and not entirely the fault of agencies like UNHCR and ICRC. How many bodies does ICTY have ? Well in reality, perhaps 1,500-2,000 separate bodies identified- and of those, approximately 400-500 show evidence of execution... massive crimes took place- but 8,000 ? Can't be proven and highly unlikely. But, as you know, when dealing with this issue- the victors need to work with large numbers." (7)

James Luko apparently does not know (or doesn't want to know) that all duplicate victim's names had already been removed from the list of missing, according to the highly respected Hague Tribunal's expert Ewa Tabeau. (8) Furthermore, the DNA results of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) support an estimate of 8,100 Srebrenica genocide victims. So far, the identities of 6,186 genocide victims have been revealed by the DNA analysis. The DNA was extracted from these bone and blood samples. Additionally, approximately 4,000 DNA-identified bodies have so far been laid to rest at the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial in Potocari.

Consider this distorted statement by James Luko:

"I can also confirm that our UN Office in Bosnia was regularly reporting the direct reports of Bosniak attacks on Serb villages around Srebrenica, but we were repeatedly ignored." (9)

As a matter of the fact, between 1992 and 1995, militarized Serb villages around Srebrenica had been used to attack and destroy nearby Bosniak villages around Srebrenica, as well as to launch brutal attacks on Srebrenica. (10) Serb village of Kravica had a large cache of weapons and was used to stage attacks on Srebrenica and nearby Bosniak villages. Furthermore, Serbs used their villages around Srebrenica to block humanitarian aid coming into the Bosniak enclave, which caused Bosniaks to start dying from starvation and engage in counter-attacks for the purpose of obtaining food and demilitarizing heavily armed Serbs around Srebrenica. According to the U.N. Report (1999) about the Fall of Srebrenica:

"A third accusation leveled at the Bosniak defenders of Srebrenica is that they provoked the Serb offensive by attacking out of that safe area. Even though this accusation is often repeated by international sources, there is no credible evidence to support it. Dutchbat personnel on the ground at the time assessed that the few “raids” the Bosniaks mounted out of Srebrenica were of little or no military significance. These raids were often organized in order to gather food, as the Serbs had refused access for humanitarian convoys into the enclave. Even Serb sources approached in the context of this report acknowledged that the Bosniak forces in Srebrenica posed no significant military threat to them. The biggest attack the Bosniaks launched out of Srebrenica during the more than two years which is was designated a safe area appears to have been the raid on the village of Visnjica, on 26 June 1995, in which several houses were burned, up to four Serbs were killed and approximately 100 sheep were stolen. In contrast, the Serbs overran the enclave two weeks later, driving tens of thousands from their homes, and summarily executing thousands of men and boys. The Serbs repeatedly exaggerated the extent of the raids out of Srebrenica as a pretext for the prosecution of a central war aim: to create geographically contiguous and ethnically pure territory along the Drina, while freeing their troops to fight in other parts of the country. The extent to which this pretext was accepted at face value by international actors and observers reflected the prism of 'moral equivalency' through which the conflict in Bosnia was viewed by too many for too long." (11)

After being confronted with the above facts, James Luko responded the following:

"In this case, I think the details of the village attacks, back and forth, Bosniak vs. Serb- is now irrelevant, it was a dirty war. UN Operation Posts cleary recorded attacks by both sides." (12)

Additionally, James Luko's distortions have already been rebuted by the Trial Judgment in the Naser Oric case. The Oric judgment makes it clear that Serb villages around Srebrenica were heavily militarized bases from which Serbs launched brutal attacks on Bosnian Muslim villages, as well as on the town of Srebrenica itself. As stated in the Judgment, quote:

"Between April 1992 and March 1993, Srebrenica town and the villages in the area held by Bosnian Muslims were constantly subjected to Serb military assaults, including artillery attacks, sniper fire, as well as occasional bombing from aircrafts. Each onslaught followed a similar pattern. Serb soldiers and paramilitaries surrounded a Bosnian Muslim village or hamlet, called upon the population to surrender their weapons, and then began with indiscriminate shelling and shooting. In most cases, they then entered the village or hamlet, expelled or killed the population, who offered no significant resistance, and destroyed their homes. During this period, Srebrenica was subjected to indiscriminate shelling from all directions on a daily basis. Potočari in particular was a daily target for Serb artillery and infantry because it was a sensitive point in the defence line around Srebrenica. Other Bosnian Muslim settlements were routinely attacked as well. All this resulted in a great number of refugees and casualties." (13)

According to the Judgment, the Bosnian Muslim villages around Srebrenica were totally unprepared for war:

"In comparison, it appears that the Bosnian Muslim side did not adequately prepare for the looming armed conflict. There were not even firearms to be found in the BosnianMuslim villages, apart from some privately owned pistols and hunting rifles; a few light weaponswere kept at the Srebrenica police station." (14)

The Judgment makes it clear that Serb village of Kravica was a military base from which Serbs launched deadly attacks on neighbouring Bosnian Muslim villages and town of Srebrenica itself. The Bosniak counter-attack on Kravica on the 7 January 1993 followed as a result of Serb blockade of humanitarian aid and constant attacks on nearby Bosnian Muslim villages. According to the Judgment:

"The fighting intensified in December 1992 and the beginning of January 1993, when Bosnian Muslims were attacked by Bosnian Serbs primarily from the direction of Kravica and Ježestica. In the early morning of the 7 January 1993, Orthodox Christmas day, Bosnian Muslims attacked Kravica, Ježestica and Šiljkovići. Convincing evidence suggests that the village guards were backed by the VRS [Bosnian Serb Army], and following the fighting in the summer of 1992, they received military support, including weapons and training. A considerable amount of weapons and ammunition was kept in Kravica and Šiljkovići. Moreover, there is evidence that besides the village guards, there was Serb and Bosnian Serb military presence in the area. The Trial Chamber is not satisfied that it can be attributed solely to Bosnian Muslims. The evidence is unclear as to the number of houses destroyed by Bosnian Muslims as opposed to those destroyed by Bosnian Serbs. In light of this uncertainty, the Trial Chamber concludes that the destruction of property in Kravica between 7 and 8 December 1992 does not fulfil the elements of wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages not justified by military necessity." (15)

The Judgment also confirms that Bosniak refugees in the besieged enclave started dying from starvation caused by the Serb blockade of humanitarian aid. As a result, Bosniaks had to counter-attack Serb military bases around Srebrenica to obtain much needed food and other necessities for the survival:

"Between June 1992 and March 1993, Bosnian Muslims raided a number of villages and hamlets inhabited by Bosnian Serbs, or from which Bosnian Muslims had formerly been expelled. One of the purposes of these actions was to acquire food, weapons, ammunition and military equipment. Bosnian Serb forces controlling the access roads were not allowing international humanitarian aid – most importantly, food and medicine – to reach Srebrenica. As a consequence, there was a constant and serious shortage of food causing starvation to peak in the winter of 1992/1993. Numerous people died or were in an extremely emaciated state due to malnutrition." (16)

We could go on and on rebutting outright lies promoted by James Luko, but he doesn't deserve more of our time since all of his genocide denial arguments have already been discredited not just by us, but also by the Hague Tribunal, independent human rights organizations, and survivors of the massacre.

James Luko is simply a man who has reduced his life for the purpose of genocide denial. Currently, he makes living by selling wine over the internet and doing some consulting work in Beijing China. (17)

References / Footnotes:

(1) http://www.nolanchart.com/author1111.html

(2) http://www.nolanchart.com/article7012.html

(3) Ibid.

(4) Ibid.

(5) http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2009/08/serbs-raped-bosniak-women-in-potocari.html

(6) http://www.icty.org/x/cases/krstic/acjug/en/krs-aj040419e.pdf

(7) See footnote #2

(8) Conflict in Numbers, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia,
http://www.helsinki.org.yu/doc/testimonies33.pdf

(9) See James Luko's comment (#6) agreeing with the genocide denial article written by Ari Rusila, http://arirusila.cafebabel.com/en/post/2009/07/19/Srebrenica-again-Hoax-or-Massacre

(10) http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2009/07/serb-villages-around-srebrenica.html

(11) Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35, The Fall of Srebrenica, section: B. Role of Bosniak forces on the ground, see excerpts here:
http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2005/12/un-report-fall-of-srebrenica-role-of.html

(12) See footnte #2

(13) Naser Oric judgment, http://www.icty.org/case/oric/4

(14) Ibid.

(15) Ibid.

(16) Ibid.

(17) "Luko Wines" by James Luko http://www.lukowines.com/

DNA TECHNOLOGY AND THE SEARCH FOR SREBRENICA'S MISSING

2009-11-07T14:47:00.001-08:00

Book title: To Know Where He Lies: DNA Technology and the Search for Srebrenica's Missing, Author: Sarah E. Wagner

Reviewed by: Peter Locke (Princeton University)

Sarah Wagner’s ethnography To Know Where He Lies examines the innovative DNA technology developed to identify the remains of the estimated 8,000 men and boys killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is characterized throughout by remarkable emotional reserve and analytical humility: theoretical ambition is sharply circumscribed, if it is present at all, and the terrible loss and grief of Wagner’s key informants—the bereaved women of Srebrenica—are consistently approached from a respectful distance, with sobriety and sensitivity. In this, says Wagner, she is emulating the dispassionate and somber seriousness, the “careful restraint,” and the dedication to detail and documentation that she observed among the scientists and case managers of the ICMP (International Commission on Missing Persons), the organization most responsible for carrying out the identification process (19). As an anthropologist, Wagner clearly feels greater responsibility to the concrete social and scientific realities she chronicles—the magnitude of the crimes committed in and around Srebrenica, the scope and scientific achievement of the ICMP’s response, the dramatic contrasts between human capacities for cruelty, on the one hand, and resilience, on the other—than to high-flown theoretical debates in anthropology and science studies, which might seem self-important, if not beside the point, in light of her material. Latour and Rabinow are briefly invoked, and Halbwachs’ mentor Henri Bergson pops up here and there to offer guidance on issues of social memory; but otherwise Wagner’s book remains firmly, laudably anchored in the concrete details of the extraordinary story she has to tell.

Following a clear and compact introduction, Wagner’s opening chapter relates the background and events of the fall of Srebrenica and the genocide—Europe’s first since WWII—that ensued. Though her emphasis on the shared culpability of the “international community” (in the guise of the UN) is helpful for understanding postwar developments, there is little to distinguish Wagner’s able retelling from histories and journalistic accounts—which she handily reviews in a few pages—already available; thus those familiar with the history may skip ahead to subsequent chapters. In brief: from 1992 on, as Bosnian Serb forces “ethnically cleansed” eastern Bosnia of its non-Serb population, Srebrenica became a rare place of refuge for Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) from surrounding areas. It was declared a UN “safe area” in the spring of 1993, and its population eked out an existence, sustained by UN aid convoys and protected (ostensibly) by a small, lightly armed unit of Dutch soldiers, until July 1995. In July’s opening days, Bosnian Serb forces, led by General Ratko Mladić—now, following Radovan Karadžić’s capture in July 2008, the last remaining major fugitive from the war crimes court in the Hague—tested the UN’s resolve by taking control of key UN peacekeeping positions in the mountains around Srebrenica. Threatened NATO airstrikes never came, and so on July 11th Mladić and his forces entered the town. Most of its population had fled to the Dutch headquarters (“Dutchbat”) in the nearby village of Potočari; some men decided to walk through heavily mined forests toward Tuzla (a harrowing trek that would come to be known as the “March of Death”). At Potočari the Dutch soldiers allowed (and even assisted) Mladić—who promised that no one would be harmed—to separate males, including children and old men, from females, and to send the former away on buses. While the women and girls were bused to Bosniak-controlled territory and released, over the following days the men were taken to nearby fields and warehouses and executed—by the hundreds, by the thousands—in a carefully planned and coordinated action. Many of the men fleeing through the woods to Tuzla were likewise captured and killed. The bodies were subsequently buried in mass graves.

It is what happened next—the unearthing of the remains and their reburial by Serb forces in secondary mass graves—that later propelled the innovations in DNA identification technology that Wagner examines. The Bosnian Serbs, she explains, sought both to annihilate the Bosniak presence from the Srebrenica enclave and to hide all evidence of the deed, “to create the illusion that their victims had never existed” (56). The exhumations and reburials mixed body parts and possessions from multiple individuals, and even scattered parts of the same body across two or more sites; traditional forensic identification techniques were thereby rendered all but useless. Secondary graves are unique in the history of mass murder: as the head of the Bosnian Federation’s Commission for Missing Person explains to Wagner in an interview, they are “a kind of innovation that the Bosnian Serbs patented” (82). One technological innovation (of genocide) compels another (of recovery and accountability). “The technology of violence implemented by the Bosnian Serb forces,” writes Wagner, “required a counterpoint system of technology, one that could take the random and minute pieces of human genetic material and render order to the commingled bones of the mass graves” (15).

The remainder of the book, after a chapter introducing the “people and place of postwar Srebrenica,” focuses on describing the development, implementation, and implications of this “counterpoint” technology, assessing its efficacy both as a technical instrument of identification and as a sociopolitical instrument of post-conflict social repair. The succession of chapters follows the journey of the missing through the entire process, from the technological and forensic work conducted at graves and in labs, to the visits of “case managers” to individual families to gather information and confirm identification, to, finally, the collective burials of newly identified remains, held annually on July 11 at the Srebrenica-Potočari memorial center, completed in 2003 on the former site of the Dutchbat compound. Ethnographic vignettes, clear explanations of technical procedures, and telling (and often moving) details consistently demonstrate the remarkable thoroughness of Wagner’s fieldwork, her mastery of Bosnia’s difficult Slavic language (Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, or BCS), and the intimacy of her access to the social interactions and entanglements generated by the identification process. This level of access, in turn, testifies to the sensitivity and care by which she earned the friendship and trust of her interlocutors. She lived for months in Srebrenica, getting to know members of “Women of Srebrenica,” a support and advocacy organization for the thousands who lost husbands, sons, and brothers; she interned at the ICMP offices and laboratories in Tuzla, learning the technical ins-and-outs of the new DNA science; and—most strikingly—she accompanied case managers on their visits to families of the missing, observing extraordinary, and often shattering, moments of grief as women signed off on papers confirming the identification of their sons’ or husbands’ mortal remains.

The technology works by analyzing and comparing DNA extracted from blood samples contributed by family members of the missing—the more, the better, and including samples from victims’ wives—to DNA extracted from body parts, primarily bones and teeth, exhumed from the secondary mass graves. It is, as one can imagine, and as Wagner carefully demonstrates, an utterly massive undertaking to carry the missing “from grave to grave,” sorting through and extracting genetic material from thousands of bones, not to mention trying to match decayed possessions—articles of clothing, the odds and ends men happened to have in their pockets as they left Srebrenica—to particular sets of remains, even with the aid of advanced software, DNA technology, and unparalleled scientific (specifically genetic) expertise. Wagner takes pains, moreover (and in good anthropological fashion), to show that the achievement of identification is not an exclusively technical or scientific feat, but depends equally on the social relationships forged between ICMP professionals and family members, on the “subjective” knowledge and memories the latter provide, and, ultimately, on the family’s recognition and agreement that the remains identified by DNA technology are in fact those of their relative. Wagner critiques how these social and subjective aspects often become invisible, both in media representations and in the ICMP’s own procedures, and argues for a more holistic approach to the identity of the missing throughout their journey: “In representing an individual as a series of numbers, the technology reduces the missing person’s existence, which travels during this state of prolonged absence along a trajectory of recognition, to too narrow a plane. In short, it prioritizes the missing person’s genetic profile over his social being” (120).

The key point, urges Wagner, is that science and humanism are inextricably intertwined forms of knowing and intervening, and privileging the former as a tool of post-conflict social repair—multi-level recovery in war’s aftermath as a technical operation—risks neglecting the multiple, and multivalent, problems, needs, and processes of social transformation that characterize societies like Bosnia. “Memory, imagination, and supposition, therefore, do not exist on the opposite side of some vertical line drawn between their subjectivity and the objectivity of DNA science,” Wagner observes. “Rather, these different kinds of knowledge gain significance within the process of identification in relation to one another” (150). She is also careful to understand and emphasize the limits of identification to bring about a sense of closure for the bereaved, a resolution to grief, much less the lofty aims of the international community—rejected outright by many Bosnians—of reconciliation and forgiveness. Wagner conveys poignant stories of families who feel the absence of their loved ones like a presence, daily; she evokes the pain of the void in their knowledge of their relatives’ fate (which identification cannot wholly fill), the incomplete and endless mourning, the wrenching permanence of loss. “And for those who had returned to their prewar homes,” she writes, “the melding of memories and imagination gave the fleeting sensation that their children were right there, just around the corner” (158). No technology—however advanced, and however sensitively intertwined with humanist and humanitarian impulses—can fully heal the social, familial, and individual wounds opened by the events of July 1995.

The missing, and the process of their identification, mean different things—and are manipulated in different ways, to different ends—for the range of stakeholders in Bosnia. For the scientists of the ICMP, Wagner observes, the missing are scientific and technical problems to be resolved; for Bosniak nationalist politicians and religious leaders, they are emblems of collective victimhood, proofs of who bears greatest guilt for the social and material devastation wrought by the war; and to Bosnia’s international overseers and humanitarian workers, their identification represents the possibility—the limits of which Wagner has so powerfully evoked—of “sociopolitical repair” and reconciliation (8). In her chapters on the annual memorial ceremony and collective burial at Potočari, Wagner discusses the oft-noted manipulation of Srebrenica for political gain by Bosniak nationalists, and points out the unintended consequences of the identification and reburial process, which include deepening divisions between Bosniak and Serb communities, especially in eastern Bosnia, where Serbs have constructed their own counter-memorials and begun to conduct counter-ceremonies for their own war victims on July 12. This is (to say the least) a troubling outcome, as it reinforces Bosnia’s entrenched, stagnating politics of competing victim claims and unresolved wartime grievances; and Wagner, noticeably, does not venture ideas or suggestions about how the process could be otherwise implemented to lessen divisive ramifications. This omission, perhaps, along with her reluctance to dwell on nationalist manipulations and maneuverings, is made in favor of emphasizing the personal meanings and effects of the Potočari ceremonies for the families of the missing. Yes, says Wagner, the missing, especially via the annual burials, are slotted into different collective categories, to different (and sometimes lamentable) strategic ends; but the individual experiences of the bereaved families, the importance of the ceremonies for their own processes of grief and going-on, consistently exceed and escape, cannot be encompassed by, these collective movements, and deserve as much or more emphasis in any account.

Indeed this accent on individual and intimate experiences of the process of loss, identification, and reburial—as against the concurrently operating collective processes of nationalism, religion, and international interventionism—guides Wagner’s efforts throughout the book. After an interesting final chapter critically exploring the worldwide uses and implications of the Bosnian DNA technology—it has been applied, to differing degrees, for differing motivations, and to differing ends, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2004 Asian tsunami—Wagner reminds her readers in a brief Epilogue that “these aspects of the identification process… are not the main point of this study. Rather, at its core, this book is about why people seek out the remains of their loved ones—what it means to them—and how the advent of a DNA-based system of post-mortem identification has helped transform this process of recovery, remembering, and reckoning. It is a reminder that among the various registers of meaning, the individual is our entry point into the social” (266). It is this strong claim and intention, perhaps—evident, if incompletely achieved, throughout the ethnography—that makes the strange absence of detailed individuals in Wagner’s book stand out: we are introduced to a handful of key characters, including Nura and Hajra, the leaders of Women of Srebrenica, and Enver and Senad, the case managers whom Wagner accompanies on family visits; but we never get to know them in depth, their histories and motivations, their despairs and aspirations. In this Wagner is, no doubt, doing her best to respect the privacy of her friends and fieldwork interlocutors, even as she works to evoke the layered emotions and trajectories of their experiences in general terms—a task in which she is undeniably successful. Yet the power of certain scenes, in which, for example, Enver and Senad work through the final approval of an identification with a bereaved mother (who never appears again in the book), make one wonder how much more effective an ethnography could have been created by tracing at least—or perhaps only—one family and their missing relatives through the entire process, “from grave to grave,” coming to know their experiences and struggles, and the meaning of the new technology to them, personally and in depth.

It is hard to fault Wagner for erring, instead, on the side of respect for the privacy and the grief of her informants, of modesty in argument and of careful, sober diligence in the act of building an ethnographic record of a new and important science. In documenting the ways the Bosnian DNA technology breaks new ground, Wagner herself breaks little, ethnographically or theoretically. Yet this choice is itself courageous, allowing Wagner to produce a remarkable ethnography: a thorough, sensitive, and moving record of an extraordinary and wrenching human and scientific story.

Peter Locke (plocke@princeton.edu) is a doctoral student in cultural anthropology at Princeton University. His dissertation examines trauma and psychosocial services in postwar Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

THE KARADZIC TRIAL AND BOSNIAN REALITIES

2009-11-07T14:12:00.000-08:00

A leading genocide scholar explains why the trial of the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is a test of justice and accountability over terrible crimes, including the Srebrenica genocide, and why the trend of events in Bosnia itself also demands the international community’s urgent attention.

PHOTO: Srebrenica massacre survivor, the elderly woman Ajsa Omerovic, 94, who has neither radio or television, looks out of the window of her temporarily accommodation, to hear new information on the trial of Radovan Karadzic, from her neighbor across the street, in a refugee center near Zivinice, 72 kms north from Sarajevo, Bosnia, on Tuesday. Photo taken on Oct. 27, 2009.

By: Prof. Martin Shaw
(official web site)

The trial of Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Serbian nationalist regime in Bosnia in the early 1990s, resumed in The Hague on 27 October 2009. The accused initially refused to appear in court on the basis that he needed more time to prepare his defence, but announced in a letter to the presiding judge on 2 November that he would indeed be present to face the court at a procedural hearing the following day.

Karadzic is charged with genocide over the attempt ‘to permanently remove Bosnian Muslims [Bosniaks] and Bosnian Croats from the territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina claimed as Bosnian Serb territory’ between 1992 and 1995, as well as over the infamous massacre at Srebrenica in July 1995. The other charges include extermination; murder; persecutions; deportation; inhumane acts; acts of violence the primary purpose of which was to spread terror among the civilian population; unlawful attacks on civilians; and the taking of hostages.

These can be seen not as a series of different crimes but as components of a single campaign of genocide. Indeed the charges potentially broaden the overall legal assessment of the Serbian genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which in earlier judgments - like that of the International Court of Justice in February 2007 - has been restricted to Srebrenica; the importance of the charges against Karadzic is that this enables understanding that Srebrenica was only the most murderous moment in the three years during which Serbian forces systematically targeted the destruction of the non-Serb population in the areas they controlled (see ‘The International Court of Justice: Serbia, Bosnia, and genocide’, 28 February 2007).

The trial - which starts sixteen months after Karadzic's arrest in Serbia in July 2008, following thirteen years in hiding there - is widely seen as the last major case of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which is scheduled to begin winding down from the end of 2009 - despite the scandalous failure to arrest Karadzic's fellow indictee Ratko Mladic, who commanded the Bosnian-Serbian forces at Srebrenica. The ICTY has had considerable success in arraigning secondary war-criminals of all nationalities, but no settling of the accounts of the post-Yugoslav wars of the 1990s will be complete until Mladic joins Karadzic in the dock. The fact that prime architects of Yugoslavia's ethnic destruction in the 1990s - Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic (who died in March 2006, during his trial) and Croatia's Franjo Tudjman (who died before he could be indicted) - escaped justice, means that the tribunal's record will appear even more seriously flawed unless Mladic and Karadzic are successfully tried.

The new trial will doubtless rekindle the deep divisions which Bosnia opened in Western publics in the 1990s. A reminder of these came on 29 October 2009 when Ed Vulliamy, the Guardian reporter who (with colleagues from the broadcaster ITN, Penny Marshall and Ian Williams, exposed the Serbian concentration-camps at Omarska and Trnopolje in August 1992) published an open letter to Amnesty International; this protests against the NGO's invitation to the radical academic Noam Chomsky to give the annual Amnesty lecture in Belfast on 30 October. Chomsky, says Vulliamy, has encouraged the ‘revisionist’ view which denied the character of the camps (even if it was others such as Thomas Deichmann, writing in Living Marxism magazine, who were the direct authors of this denial [see Ed Vulliamy, ‘Poison in the well of history’, Guardian, 15 March 2000]).

In 2005, Chomsky told a Guardian interviewer: ‘Ed Vulliamy is a very good journalist, but he happened to be caught up in a story which is probably not true.’ Vulliamy reminds Amnesty that he directly witnessed the situation he described, and went on to collect hundreds of testimonies; he accuses the human-rights organisation of ‘giving comfort’ to Mladic and Karadzic through its invitation to Chomsky.

The logic of Dayton

The political realities on the ground in Bosnia put some of these controversies in perspective. Radovan Karadzic may be in the dock in The Hague, but the Serbian statelet of Republika Srpska (RS) which he founded is firmly entrenched. The first phase of the Serbian campaign in 1992-93 left RS in control of a formerly mixed territory, from which 90% of the non-Serb population (principally Muslims and Croats) were expelled through the brutal methods described in the ICTY's indictment of Karadzic.

The Serb forces failed fully to defeat Bosnian and Croatian forces, but the diplomatic settlement of November 2005 - the Dayton (Ohio) peace accords, agreed by Bill Clinton (the United States president), Slobodan Milosevic, Franjo Tudjman, and Alija Izetbegovic (Bosnia's president) - left the Serbian nationalists in control of the RS, even if it was reincorporated into a nominally unified and internationally supervised Bosnia-Herzegovina. The international regime was supposed to support the return of refugees to RS (as to Croatian- and Bosnian-controlled areas). In the event, the small number of returns achieved have not altered the outcome of the genocidal war: Serbs today form almost 90% of RS's population.

The Dayton settlement thus (in Marko Attila Hoare's words) ‘established a Bosnia-Herzegovina that was more partitioned than united’, and subsequent developments have reinforced the partitionist logic. For every year that the Dayton settlement persists it brings Bosnia another step closer (Hoare again) ‘to full and complete partition. Every year, Republika Srpska further consolidates itself as a de facto independent state; the Office of the High Representative [OHR; Bosnia's international overseer] declines in power and authority; the international community's will and ability to coerce the Republika Srpska are that much weaker; the already dim prospect of Bosniaks and Croats returning to Republika Srpska recedes further; and the share of the Bosnian population that can remember the unified, multinational country that existed before 1992 becomes smaller.’

Even in late 2007 it was possible for Peter Lippman to argue that the international regime was having some success in integrating the police and the army into a unified Bosnian force (see ‘Crisis and reform: a turnaround in Bosnia?’, 18 December 2007). Two years on, the low-key current international efforts to move Bosnian politicians towards reform are completely deadlocked. Serbian secessionist impulses - part-cause and part-consequence of this situation - are never far from the surface. Moreover the current RS administration of Milorad Dodik is growing in its defiance of the international regime and (a linked matter given the statelet's provenance) its denial of the very crimes of which Karadzic is accused.

Dodik, who has denied that genocide was committed at Srebrenica, further provoked the non-Serb population of Bosnia in September 2009 by pointedly denying one of the worst Serbian atrocities of the war: the massacre of seventy young people in a square in Tuzla in May 1995. (In this context, Ed Vulliamy is right to say that the questioning of well-documented atrocities such as the concentration camps by Western commentators is no academic matter; and that Noam Chomsky's attitude to these issues raises questions about Amnesty's choice of lecturer).

Against this background, even a conviction in the Karadzic trial - assuming the accused's spoiling tactics are unsuccessful - will be a hollow victory for his victims. The danger, Hoare suggests, is that ‘however monstrous the injustice that Bosnian partition would represent, with every year that passes, the injustice is further forgotten by the world and full partition - like death - draws nearer. We need only look at the other injustices that have become realities on the ground: the three-way partition of Macedonia in 1912-13; the dispossession of the Armenian population of Anatolia; the dispossession of the Palestinian population of present-day Israel - these are realities on the ground’ (see ‘Bosnia: weighing the options’, Bosnian Institute, 13 October 2009).

The cost of failure

It is difficult to gainsay this bleak assessment of the historical record: partitions have always involved appalling injustices which have rarely been reversed (see Sumantra Bose, ‘The partition evasion’, 23 August 2007). The Indian partition of 1947 is one of the worst examples. For a century, Western ‘statesmen’ have been tempted to draw lines on maps and consign hundreds of thousands of people to suffering; all the more reason by now to have learned from these experiences.

If the partition of Bosnia is indeed steadily becoming irreversible, this should cause alarm across Europe. It should not be assumed that Balkan politicians' need for European recognition and funding will always inhibit radical moves that would once again destabilise the region. The integration of southeastern Europe into the European Union and Western institutions has not proceeded so far as to provide full insurance against a new Bosnian - or even wider Balkan - war.

The situation of Bosnia, and especially of its Bosniak majority areas, is - under the pressure of Serbian separatism - getting more serious. It is time for Western politicians, having accepted responsibility for Bosnia, to consider and take the steps necessary to prevent this already divided country from moving towards new and dangerous schisms.

Peter Lippman also argued in 2007 that ‘nationalist leaders - Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks’ had a responsibility ‘to show that they are serious about developing the reforms that would allow Bosnia- Herzegovina to exist as a functional state that can join the European Union on its own.’ But it is even more urgent that ‘the international community and the OHR maintain a robust stance with regard to these reforms, in order to prompt and encourage Bosnian leaders to see them through.’ The Radovan Karadzic trial is a reminder of the worst that could happen if they fail.

Martin Shaw is professor of international relations and politics at the University of Sussex. A historical sociologist of war and global politics, his books include War and Genocide (Polity, 2003), The New Western Way of War (Polity, 2005), and What is Genocide? (Polity, 2007). He is editor of the global site (www.theglobalsite.ac.uk). This comment appeared on the Open Democracy website (www.opendemocracy.net), 3 November 2009.

MOCKERY OF THE INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE

2009-11-05T14:11:00.000-08:00

RADOVAN KARADZIC TRIAL ADJOURNED UNTIL MARCH 1, 2010

Instruction to exterminate: In March 1995, Radovan Karadzic issued "Directive 7" instructing the Bosnian Serb Army to exterminate Bosnian Muslims trapped in Srebrenica:

"Complete the physical separation of Srebrenica from Zepa as soon as possible, preventing even communication between individuals in the two enclaves. By planned and well-thought out combat operations, create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica."

Four months later, Serb forces committed the genocide at Srebrenica in which 30,000 Bosniaks were forcibly expelled in a massive scale ethnic cleansing campaign, while at least 8,372 Bosniaks were hunted down, lined up and summarily executed, then dumped into mass graves, and later relocated to secondary mass graves to cover up the crime. So far, the DNA analysis shows 8,100 victims of the genocide. According to the Krstic judgment, approximately 40,000 Bosniaks living in Srebrenica were targeted for extinction. Three years before the Srebrenica genocide, Serb forces deliberately murdered many Bosniak children in/around Srebrenica (see photos).

JUSTICE? KARADZIC'S OBSTRUCTION OF THE TRIAL PAYS OFF.

Judges at the Hague Tribunal have appointed a lawyer for Radovan Karadzic and adjourned his trial until March 1, 2010. Karadzic has repeatedly obstructed the trial refusing to appear and claiming that he needs more time to prepare his defence. He was 13 years on the run, how much more time does he really need to prepare for his defence?

The presiding judge O-Gon Kwon wrote that Karadzic has already "substantially and persistently obstructed the proper and expeditious conduct of his trial by refusing to attend the proceedings until such time as he considers himself to be ready." That "effectively brought the trial to a halt, which is evidently his purpose."

The judge added that should Karadzic "continue to absent himself from the resumed trial proceedings in March, or should he engage in any other conduct that obstructs the proper and expeditious conduct of the trial, he will forfeit his right to self-representation ... and the appointed counsel will take over."

Karadzic "cannot reasonably claim to require many more months to prepare for trial when his preparation includes matters that are not, and will not be, the subject of the trial," Kwon said, citing statements by Karadzic that he plans to show who was responsible for "the outbreak of the war."

The indictment against Karadzic has already been reduced to speed up the trial.

Karadzic - in his own words

On the eve of the war, Karadzic said that Muslims would ‘disappear from the face of the earth’, that Sarajevo will become ‘a black cauldron where 300,000 Muslims will die’, that he, Karadzic, would tell ‘Europe to go fuck off and stay away until we have finished the job’. According to the prosecution, those quotes clearly indicate the mens rea of the accused and his intent in the war.

The Prosecutor Alan Tieger submitted into evidence statements made by Karadzic, including:

"For the benefit of our people we will do anything we have to do, without mercy."

"They have to know that there are 20,000 armed Serbs around Sarajevo . . . it will be a black cauldron where 300,000 Muslims will die."

"They will disappear. That people will disappear from the face of the Earth."

"I think it is clear to the army and clear to everyone. It will be a real bloodbath."

"Europe will be told to go f*** itself and not to come back until the job is finished."

"No Muslim foundations shall ever be laid in Serb areas and Serbian villages... All foundations that are laid will be blown up. You must not sell land to the Muslims . . . this is a fight to the finish. It is a battle for living space."

For some reason, the prosecutor failed to include the following Karadzic's statements:

On 13 October 1991, Karadzic, talking to Momcilo Mandic, said: "Within a few days there will be no Sarajevo, and there will be over 500,000 dead; within a month the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina will be destroyed!"

Again, on 15 October 1991, Karadzic foresees the extermination of the Muslims in the event of war. Talking to Miodrag Davidovic and his own brother Luka, Karadzic said: "In the first instance, none of their leaders will remain alive, they will be killed within 3 or 4 hours. They will have no chance of surviving."

Miroslav Deronjic, a former Bosnian Serb politician who has pleaded guilty to war crimes, said he met Radovan Karadzic in early July 1995, shortly before Serbs attacked the United Nations-declared ''safe area'' of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia.''At one moment, he said the following sentence to me, "Miroslav, all of them need to be killed -- whatever you can lay your hands on, '' Mr.Deronjic told a pre-appeal hearing for a former Bosnian Serb general, Radislav Krstic.

SERBIA TOOK PART IN SREBRENICA GENOCIDE

2009-11-04T15:05:00.000-08:00

NEW EVIDENCE EMERGES: SERBIA IS UNQUESTIONABLY GUILTY OF GENOCIDE

The evidence confirming the involvement of Serbia in the Srebrenica genocide is mounting. This will help us one day to re-start genocide lawsuit against Serbia. It's never too late, even 100 years from now is not going to be too late. Serbia is guilty of genocide and not even God can deny that.

Regardless of the ICJ's verdict with respect to the Bosnian Genocide, we all know that the willingness of the Court to accept blacked out (censored) copies of the minutes of wartime meetings of Yugoslav political and military leaders amounted to gross miscariage of justice for the victims of genocide. Furthermore, after the ICJ verdict, new evidence against Serbia have surfaced and will be used against Serbia in a new genocide trial in the future.

#1. NEW EVIDENCE: At the trial of the former Chief of the Yugoslav Army General Staff Momcilo Perisic, the prosecution has admitted into evidence a number of photographs taken on 18 July 1995 at the Bosnian Serb Army's Main Staff Headquarters in Crna Rijeka. The photographs show witness Ned Krajisnik with generals Ratko Mladic and Momcilo Perisic. This confirms that one of the highest ranking Yugoslav Army Generals was at the scene of the crime during the genocide. According to the indictment, Perisic is charged with providing support to the Bosnian Serb Army and contributing substantially to the crimes its troops committed, thousands of Bosniak men and boys were executed in Srebrenica between 13 and 19 July 1995, after they were captured by the forces under Ratko Mladic’s command. The indictment also alleges that the status and benefits of Ratko Mladic, who was the commander of the Republika Srpska Main Staff, were regulated through the 30th Personnel Center of the Yugoslav Army. [read more here]

#2. NEW EVIDENCE: "Serbians in Potocari" is an article published by SENSE TRIBUNAL and - for some reason - available only in Bosnian language. According to the article, "Srbijanci u Potocarima" dated 2 September 2009: "Among the members of the Serbian forces who - after the fall of Srebrenica on 12th July 1995 - came to Potocari were members of the Serbia's Uzice Corps, according to a protected prosecution witness in the trial of former Chief of Yugoslav Army, General Momcilo Perisic." [read more here]

#3. NEW EVIDENCE: One of major reasons why Bosnia failed to prove Serbia's direct involvement in the Srebrenica genocide is because Serbia claimed in front of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Scorpions, who participated in the Srebrenica massacre, were paramilitary group and not under the control of the Serbian government. However, in the ongoing trial of former chief of Serbian State Security Service (DB) Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, Serbian MUP reserve officer Milomir Kovacevic has revealed that Scorpions were in fact under the control of Serbian State Security Service.

"During his stay in Western Slavonia and Baranja in 1991 and 1992 the witness had several close encounters with members of the Serb Volunteer Guard (SDG) led by Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan, and with the ‘Scorpions’ unit. Kovacevic contends that both formations were controlled by the Serbian State Security Service, headed at that time by Jovica Stanisic. Franko Simatovic was Stanisic’s deputy. In September or October 1991, the witness attended a meeting where Raznatovic showed a blue ID card issued by the Serbian State Security Service and claimed that the Serbian government and the intelligence service were behind him. The ‘Scorpions’ were at that time guarding the oil fields in Djeletovci, the witness said, adding that a Serbian intelligence officer in the field told him that they operated there DB control." [read more here]

DO NOT FORGET: Srebrenica, how it all started?

From 1992-1995 Serbs from heavily militarized villages around Srebrenica had forced approximately 40,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees to live in the Srebrenica ghetto with little or no means of survival. The number of refugees increased to 80,000 by winter 1992/93.

Serb Army stationed around Srebrenica never demilitarized, even though they were required to do so under the 1993 demilitarization agreements. Furthermore, Serbs around Srebrenica constantly attacked neighbouring Bosnian Muslim villages, frequently bombarding them from air and with Serbian airplanes. More than 400 Bosnian Muslim villages were destroyed around Srebrenica in 1992 with at least 11,000 Bosniaks killed in Podrinje (region encompasing Srebrenica).

In July 1995 the Bosnian Serb army staged a brutal takeover of Srebrenica and its surrounding area, where they proceeded to perpetrate genocide. Bosnian Serb soldiers and paramilitary thugs, both groups commonly known as "Chetniks," separated Bosniak families, forcibly expelled 30,000 Bosniaks, and summarily executed at least 8,372 Bosnian Muslims - boys, men, and the elderly.

WOMEN OF SREBRENICA SEEK JUSTICE

2009-11-03T19:52:00.000-08:00

WOMEN OF SREBRENICA ARE HEROES; THEY ARE A MORAL COMPASS FOR THE INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE. WE'RE PROUD OF THEM AND WE HONOR THEM.

PHOTO (1): Srebrenica women protest outside the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday Oct. 26, 2009.

Our hearts go the survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, the elderly women who still find strength to fight for the justice; women who regularly hold vigils in remembrance of 40,000 people that had been targeted for extinction in July 1995; women who went to the Hague to face Radovan Karadzic and show him that he failed to kill them all; women who protest in front of the International Criminal Tribunal at the Hague and demand fairness for 8,372 victims of the genocide; women, mothers, heroes of our time. Here they are:

PHOTO (2): Srebrenica genocide survivor, Hajra Catic, 64, watches the TV broadcast of the Radovan Karadzic trial, in front of wall covered with photos of victims of the Srebrenica massacre, at the office of the NGO Union of Srebrenica Women, in the Bosnian town of Tuzla, Nov. 3, 2009. Hajra Catic, who heads the Bosnian NGO Women of Srebrenica (Zene Srebrenice), lost her husband and son in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

PHOTO (3): Women who survived the 1995 Srebrenica genocide hold a hand woven carpet with the names of their killed relatives embroidered, before boarding a bus, in Sarajevo, early on 24 October, 2009. Buses carrying about 200 Bosnian Muslim family members of the war victims departed Sarajevo to the Hague, Netherlands, to demand swift trial and severe punishment for Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, facing war crimes trial.

PHOTO (4): A Bosnian Muslim woman from Srebrenica, holds a protest banner before boarding a bus, in Sarajevo, early on Saturday Oct. 24. , 2009. Buses carrying about 200 Bosnian Muslim family members of war victims departed Sarajevo for the Hague, Netherlands, to demand a swift trial and severe punishment for Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

PHOTO (5): Families of victims of the Srebrenica genocide along with others from Bosnia in Sarajevo preparing to take off for The Hague to hold rallies in front of the Hague tribunal building until they are assured that Karadzic trial is fair to the victims.

PHOTO (6): Women of Srebrenica hold a protest banner before boarding a bus, in Sarajevo, early on Saturday Oct. 24, 2009 departing for the Hague, Netherlands, to demand a swift trial and severe punishment for Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

PHOTO (7): A Bosnian Muslim woman from Srebrenica prepares to board a bus in Sarajevo, early on Saturday Oct. 24, 2009 for the Hague to face war criminal Radovan Karadzic.

PHOTO (8): Survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre watch the proceedings at the start of the war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, in the Sarajevo suburb of Ilijas October 26, 2009. Karadzic refused to attend the start of his war crimes trial, and judges said they could appoint a lawyer to represent him if he failed to show up again.

PHOTO (9): Survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre watch the proceedings at the start of the war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, in the Sarajevo suburb of Ilijas October 26, 2009. Karadzic refused to attend the start of his war crimes trial, and judges said they could appoint a lawyer to represent him if he failed to show up again.

PHOTO (10): Survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre watch the proceedings at the start of the war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, in the Sarajevo suburb of Ilijas October 26, 2009. Karadzic refused to attend the start of his war crimes trial, and judges said they could appoint a lawyer to represent him if he failed to show up again.

PHOTO (11): Bosnian women stage a protest in The Hague at the start of the trial against Radovan Karadzic at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague on October 26, 2009.

PHOTO (12): Bosnian Muslim women from Srebrenica Nura Begovic, 58, left, and Hajra Catic, 64,right, watch the TV broadcast of the Radovan Karadzic trial, in front of wall covered with photos of victims of the Srebrenica massacre.

PHOTO (13): Srebrenica women stage a protest in The Hague at the start of the trial against Radovan Karadzic at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague on October 26, 2009.

PHOTO (14): Srebrenica massacre survivor, the elderly woman, Ajsa Omerovic, 94, who has neither radio or television, looks out of the window of her temporarily accommodation, to hear new information on the trial of Radovan Karadzic, from her neighbor across the street, in a refugee center near Zivinice on Oct. 27, 2009.

PHOTO (15): Srebrenica massacre survivor, the elderly woman, Hatidja Karic, 80, reacts as she listens to a news report on a radio on the trial of Radovan Karadzic in The Hague, Netherlands, in a refugee center near Zivinice on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009.

PHOTO (16): Two elderly women, Srebrenica massacre survivors, Mejra Jasic, 70, right, and Ajsa Dervisevic, 58, left react as they listen to news on the radio of the UN trial against Radovan Karadzic in The Hague, Netherlands, in a refugee center near Zivinice on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009.

PHOTO (17): Srebrenica massacre survivor, the elderly woman, Suhra Malic reacts while watching proceedings at the war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic at home in Potocari near Srebrenica October 26, 2009. Karadzic refused to attend the start of his trial.

PHOTO (18): Srebrenica massacre survivor, the elderly woman, Suhra Malic reacts at home while showing pictures of her sons who were killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre before watching proceedings at the war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, in Potocari near Srebrenica October 26, 2009.

PHOTO (19): Bosnian mothers and relatives of war victims protest October 26, 2009 in The Hague outside the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at the start of the planned tial of Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, who boycotted the start of his UN genocide trial. Neither Karadzic nor any of his legal advisors were present at the ICTYwhen judge O-Gon Kwon started the hearing, which lasted less than 15 minutes.

PHOTO (20): Djamila [Dzemila] Delalic reacts after judges at the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal adjourned the trial of Radovan Karadzic, after Karadzic's boycot to appear on his trial in The Hague Netherlands, Monday Oct. 26, 2009.

PHOTO (21): Dzemila Delalic reacts after judges at the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal adjourned the trial of Radovan Karadzic, after Karadzic's boycot to appear on his trial in The Hague Netherlands, Monday Oct. 26, 2009.

PHOTO (22): Srebrenica massacre survivor, the elderly woman, Suhra Malic, prays at the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial in Potocari, near Srebrenica, on October 26, 2009.

PHOTO (23): Srebrenica massacre survivors, the elderly couple Suhra Malic (2nd L) and Hasan Malic look at the wall of 8,372 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide on October 26, 2009.

PHOTO (24): Srebrenica massacre survivor, woman from Srebrenica Nura Begovic, 58, watches the TV broadcast of the Radovan Karadzic trial, in front of wall covered with photos of victims of the Srebrenica massacregenocide, at the Association "Women of Srebrenica" in the Bosnian town of Tuzlaon Nov. 3, 2009.

PHOTO (25): Bosnian Muslim Suhra Malic (R) and a friend watch the proceedings at the war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic in their home in Potocari near Srebrenica October 26, 2009.

PHOTO (26): Srebrenica women protest outside the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday Oct. 26, 2009. Judges adjourned the trial of Radovan Karadzic, after he boycotted his trial.

PHOTO (27): View of the empty seat where Radovan Karadzic was supposed to sit when attending the start of his trial at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday Oct. 26, 2009.

PHOTO (28): Journalists watch former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic (C) as he sits in the courtroom of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague November 3 2009. Karadzic appeared on Tuesday for an administrative hearing in his war crimes trial, temporarily giving up his boycott to ask for more time to prepare his case. Karadzic, 64, has denied all 11 war crimes charges brought against him over the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including two genocide charges -- for the massacre of 8,000 Bosniak men and boys at Srebrenica and for broader atrocities.

PHOTO (29): Srebrenica massacre survivor, woman, Hajrija Ademovic, 38, prays near the gravestones of Srebrenica genocide victims, at the Memorial Center at Potocari, near Srebrenica, on Oct. 26, 2009.

PHOTO (30): Srebrenica massacre survivor, woman, Hajrija Ademovic, 38, prays near the gravestones of Srebrenica genocide victims, at the Memorial Center at Potocari, near Srebrenica, on Oct. 26, 2009.

PHOTO (31): Bosnian Muslim women visit an abandoned cultural centre where Bosniak men and boys were executed by Serb forces in 1995 in the village of Pilica July 13, 2009. A group of survivors and relatives of victims visited for the first time sites of execution of thousands of Bosniak men and boys from Srebrenica on the anniversary of the killings.

PHOTO (32): Srebrenica women, survivors of the 1995 genocide, hold empty bullet shells they found at the execution site of Bosniak men and boys by Serb forces in 1995 near Karakaj July 13, 2009. A group of survivors and relatives of victims visited for the first time sites of execution of thousands of Bosniak men and boys from Srebrenica on the anniversary of the killings.

VIDEO: SREBRENICA SURVIVOR'S STORY

2009-11-03T19:51:00.000-08:00

Srebrenica - a survivor's story (October 1995)

Channel 4 News talks to a survivor of the massacre of Bosniak men and boys after the fall of Srebrenica. Hurem Suljic describes being transported on busses by Bosnian Serbs. Watch video ↓

"I noticed that they were taking a man out - an older man and then I saw there were three of four of them standing on one side and three or four standing on the other. And so I stood at the door. I wanted to see what was going to happen to him. When he reached them, the one on the left had an iron rod. He hit them man on the back of the head and he fell. And another on the right hand side was standing there and with an axe he hit him across the spine. With the sharp edge. And so the axe sunk unto him and was left in him."

VIDEO: SREBRENICA MASS GRAVE

2009-11-03T19:46:00.000-08:00

Srebrenica - mass graves found (January 1996)

NATO reveals that as many as 300 mass graves, some of them over a mile long, could be found in Bosnia. The NATO commander said the scale of the atrocities made it impossible for the implementation force to guard all suspected grave sites. Channel 4 News is the first television programme to gain extensive access to the grave sites. Watch video ↓

VIDEO: THE FALL OF SREBRENICA

2009-11-03T19:36:00.000-08:00

The fall of Srebrenica (July 1995)

Bosnian Serb troops defy NATO airstrikes and overwhelm the safe haven of Srebrenica. The town fell just two hours after NATO jets launched strikes against Bosnian Serb tanks. Thousands of refugees fled the area. Gaby Rado reports on the fall of Srebrenica and what it means for the future of UN operations in Bosnia. Watch video ↓

VIDEO: RADOVAN KARADZIC'S DENIAL

2009-11-03T18:52:00.000-08:00

Jon Snow interviews Radovan Karadzic (January 1993)

Karadzic's defence will be based on the point blank denial of his knowledge or involvement in the widespread attrocities that Serb forces had committed in the Bosnian war. In 1993, he denied involvement in the widespread rapes. Prosecutor Alan Tieger recently stated that Karadzic was informed about everything that was going on. "He covered up the mass expulsions and murders and continues to do so today." Watch video ↓

VIDEO: SREBRENICA 10 YEARS ON

2009-11-03T18:51:00.000-08:00

Srebrenica 10 years on (July 2005)

Alex Thomson looks back on 10 years since the massacre of Srebrenica when 8,000 Bosniaks were murdered. Srebrenica became the worst massacre in Europe since the end of the Second World War. But a decade after the fall of what was supposed to be the UN safe haven, the vast majority of the thousands of people who died remain unidentified. Watch video ↓

ATLAS OF WAR CRIMES ON GOOGLE MAPS

2009-11-03T11:28:00.000-08:00

BOSNIAN ATLAS OF WAR CRIMES (1991-1995)
LAUNCHED ON GOOGLE MAPS

SCREENSHOT: Atlas of War Crimes shows locations of mass killings of Bosnian civilians in/around Srebrenica in 1992-95.

Research and Documentation Center in Sarajevo (RDC), led by Mirsad Tokaca, has launched "Bosnian Atlas of War Crimes" on GOOGLE MAPS allowing readers to find sites of mass executions, mass graves, individual graves, locations of imprisonment, concentration camps, medical objects, religious objects (destruction of mosques, churches, and synagoges), incidents of human shields, sniper attacks, rapes, etc, along with the names of the victims, as well as available court documentation. The project shows crimes committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1991-1995.

The atlas contains 50,000 geographic sites where war atrocities took place, accompanied with photos and video-clips of the events. Tokaca said that the atlas will be updated with more facts as they come.

"The Bosnian war crimes atlas is a comprehensive depository of facts about war events," said Mirsad Tokaca. "It is needed to help us face the past, a process which until now has been under the monopoly of various elites for their own purposes... We do not suggest to anyone what they should think. We offer the facts about events -- what we call a geography of the crimes."

"With this atlas, we are striking a deadly blow to those who are playing with numbers. We have not ignored anyone's ethnic or religious affiliation but we have ignored the divisions along ethnic or religious lines," said Tokaca.

Preliminary critique:

#1. Re: 1993 Srebrenica Children Massacre ( @ Wikipedia):

While the project acknowledges that on April 12 1993 Serbs slaughtered around 60 people (mostly children) and wounded 70 in front of Srebrenica's Elementary School "Mihajlo Bjelakovic", the project lists names of only 16 victims. Furthermore, the U.N. transcripts [12-year old Sead Bekric testimony (photo) (link) (video)] show 62 Bosniak children killed and 152 wounded. It is obvious that something is wrong with Tokaca's number, especially when he uses rhetoric that he is "striking a deadly blow to those who are playing with numbers." We hope RDC updates its Atlas with complete information.

#2. Re: 1992 Bosniak Women and Children Burned Alive ( @ Wikipedia):
While the project acknowledges that more than 70 Bosnian Muslim women and children were burned alive in the house of Meho Aljic in Bikavac (Visegrad municipality borders with the Srebrenica municipality), the project only lists 12 names of the victims - even though the names of the victims are publicly available from the web site of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). We hope RDC updates its database will complete information.

Before you start using RDC's Atlas of War Crimes, follow these steps to better understand the "numbers of killed":

STEP 1: Read our quick introduction How Many People Died in the Bosnian War 1992-1995?

STEP 2: How Many People Died in the Srebrenica Genocide in July 1995?

STEP 3: (Optional) Download Google Maps (if you don't have it installed on your computer)

STEP 4: Download the latest version of RDC's Atlas of War Crimes at this link. If the link is broken, visit www.idc.org.ba and then look for "Bosanski atlas ratnih zločina." Their site is currently being 're-designed' and the English language version is temporarily unavailable.

DO NOT FORGET: Srebrenica - how it all started (1992-95)?

From 1992-1995 Serbs from heavily militarized villages around Srebrenica had forced approximately 40,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees to live in the Srebrenica ghetto with little or no means of survival. The number of refugees increased to 80,000 by winter 1992/93.

Serb Army stationed around Srebrenica never demilitarized, even though they were required to do so under the 1993 demilitarization agreements. Furthermore, Serbs around Srebrenica constantly attacked neighbouring Bosnian Muslim villages, frequently bombarding them from air and with Serbian airplanes. More than 400 Bosnian Muslim villages were destroyed around Srebrenica in 1992 with at least 11,000 Bosniaks killed in Podrinje (region encompasing Srebrenica).

In July 1995 the Bosnian Serb army staged a brutal takeover of Srebrenica and its surrounding area, where they proceeded to perpetrate genocide. Bosnian Serb soldiers and paramilitary thugs, both groups commonly known as "Chetniks," separated Bosniak families, forcibly expelled 30,000 Bosniaks, and summarily executed at least 8,372 Bosnian Muslims - boys, men, and the elderly.

RADOVAN KARADZIC SORRY FOR NOT EXTERMINATING ALL MUSLIMS IN SREBRENICA

2009-11-02T10:23:00.000-08:00

"He [the sniper] skipped me but got my [7-year old] child. I didn’t have the money for a tombstone so I got a donation from some charity for the purpose." Dzenana Sokolovic, survivor.

KARADZIC'S GOAL WAS PERMANENT ELIMINATION OF MUSLIMS OF BOSNIA

"Karadzic was a key figure in the joint criminal enterprise aimed at the forcible and permanent elimination of Bosnian Muslims and Croats from large parts of the BH territory in order to create ‘an ethnically clean Serb state’ there, the prosecution emphasized. On the eve of the war, Karadzic said that Muslims would ‘disappear from the face of the earth’, that Sarajevo will become ‘a black cauldron where 300,000 Muslims will die’, that he, Karadzic, would tell ‘Europe to go f**k off and stay away until we have finished the job’. According to the prosecution, those quotes clearly indicate the mens rea of the accused and his intent in the war."

PHOTO: Bosnian Muslim couple Suhra Malic (2nd L) and Hasan Malic look at a memorial to 8,372 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica gempcode in Potocari on October 26, 2009 before court proceedings for former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

"Karadzic covered up murders, and that is what he's doing even today." Prosecutor Alan Tieger.

Radovan Karadzic's only regret about the Srebrenica massacre was that some survived, his war crime trial has been told today. At least 8,372 well documented Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) victims died in the massacre in a matter of days, while 30,000 other people were forcibly expelled from their homes in a massive ethnic cleansing campaign. Many women and girls were raped during the massacre (read one of shocking testimonies about the rape of women during the Srebrenica massacre).

It had already been established in Krstic Appeal that Serb forces "targeted for extinction the 40,000 Bosnian Muslims living in Srebrenica" so it is no surprise that Karadzic regrets for not killing all of them.

On the eve of the war, Karadzic said that Muslims would ‘disappear from the face of the earth’, that Sarajevo will become ‘a black cauldron where 300,000 Muslims will die’, that he, Karadzic, would tell ‘Europe to go fuck off and stay away until we have finished the job’. According to the prosecution, those quotes clearly indicate the mens rea of the accused and his intent in the war.

"Karadzic is responsible for one of the dark episodes aimed at the elimination of Bosnian The only thi Muslims from Srebrenica and the ethnic cleansing of eastern Bosnia. He was regularly informed from the various sources, he was in direct contact with [General Ratko] Mladic, he knew that people are being expelled and killed. He covered up murders, and that is what he's doing even today," said prosecutor Alan Tieger.

The prosecutor stated that the accused also admitted that he was responsible for every order and decision, that he was behind the attacks against Srebrenica and Zepa and the taking of UN staff as hostages: ‘drastic measures were called for’ and ‘use of every mean to defend ourselves’.

Karadzic was a key figure in the joint criminal enterprise aimed at the forcible and permanent elimination of Bosnian Muslims and Croats from large parts of the BH territory in order to create ‘an ethnically clean Serb state’ there, the prosecution emphasized.

Karadzic knows he is guilty, so he again boycotted his trial again, but promised the judges that he would attend a procedural hearing on his defence case scheduled for Tuesday. Karadzic apparently needs more time to prepare his defence and attempt to introduce falsified records as evidence in his trial. His key 'experts' include a highly discredited genocide deniers, like Milivoje Ivanisevic and Kosta Cavoski.

During today's hearing, UN prosecutor Alan Tieger focused on Europe's worst atrocity since the Second World War as he wound up his opening statement for the tribunal's judges. He called the July 1995 massacre in Srebrenica "one of humanity's dark chapters" and laid the blame squarely at Karadzic's feet.

"The murder of these men and the expulsion of the women, children and elderly did not arise from nowhere," he said. "These crimes were the culmination of the accused's determination to cleanse eastern Bosnia to ensure the Serb state he envisioned."

Karadzic is charged with two counts of genocide - for the Srebrenica genocide and Bosnian genocide - and nine other crimes against humanity and war crimes linked to atrocities throughout Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Dzenana Sokolovic who lost her 7-year old son Nermin to a sniper in 1994 and was wounded herself in the attack will be among the first witnesses to appear at the genocide trial against Karadzic.

“He [the sniper] skipped me but got my child. He is always on my mind, no matter whether I am awake or asleep,” she said. “He was only seven when he died. He was a clever boy and would sit with me and ask: ‘So, mummy, how are we going to do this? What shall we do?’... It was just a child… with blond curly hair and big green eyes. Nobody can replace him.”

“I didn’t have the money for a tombstone so I got a donation from some charity for the purpose,” she said. “I still visit his grave although when I come back from the cemetery I feel half dead for a week.”

PHOTO: A rose is seen, at the wall with the names of victims of the Sarajevo 1992-1995 siege, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009. During the siege of Sarajevo, by Bosnian Serb forces, more than 12, 000 people were killed including 1,500 children.

Karadzic's boycott of the trial last week frustrated dozens of war survivors - many of them widows from Srebrenica - who had travelled hundreds of miles by bus to see him face justice after 13 years on the run.

"We expected some kind of justice but there is not any," said Suada Mugic, a Srebrenica survivor who took a 30-hour bus trip from Bosnia to watch the trial. "This is very hard and upsetting for us. Everything reminds us of 1995. My husband disappeared, my father and some 23 members of my family."

Prosecutor Hildegard Uertz Retzlaff qualified Karadzic’s absence from court as ‘essential and persistent obstruction of trial’; the only way to resolve it would be to assign counsel to the accused, she said.

The prosecution will corroborate its allegations with documents and orders drafted or signed by Karadzic, with transcripts from the meetings of the Assembly, government, crisis staffs and other bodies of Republika Srpska, intercepted conversations between the accused and other participants in the joint criminal enterprise and testimony of more than 400 witnesses, including members of various international organizations that negotiated with Karadzic, insiders or former collaborators of the accused and numerous victims and surviving members of their families.

15 Minutes of Shame:

PHOTO: A group of Serbian thugs, supporters of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, toast and play Gusle, a traditional one-string instrument, in "The Madhouse", Karadzic's favourite bar in New Belgrade, Serbia, Monday, Oct. 26, 2009, as they celebrate the adjourned of Karadzic's war crimes trial.